


The Monsters, by NayenLemunantu (English Translation)

by adastra03 (ad_astra_03)



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Venom (Comics), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Inspired by Mad Max Series (Movies), M/M, Past Character Death, Post-Apocalypse, Soulmates, Translation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2019-09-18 11:23:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16994082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ad_astra_03/pseuds/adastra03
Summary: Nuclear war, radiation, and toxic gas had poisoned the planet.  The hundreds of millions who died fighting in the Third World War were nothing compared to everyone who died afterward from hunger, toxins, and diseases.  The war had lasted 31 years and only 15% of the global population had survived.  And survival was becoming more and more difficult: the earth had turned to desert, the rivers dried up, the forests died, and food was running out almost as quickly as gasoline.  Then came the invasion, the monsters who descended from the sky and infected everyone.Those few who had not yet been infected had to stay in constant motion, in search of gasoline, water, and food—fleeing, always fleeing.(This is a translation into English of NayenLemunantu's original story written in Spanish.)





	1. hope is a mistake (prologue)

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [The Monsters](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/503242) by Nayen Lemunantu. 



> **ETA August 2019: _¡Aviso Importante!_** La historia original que está escrita en español ahora está disponsible solamente en [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/story/166655788-the-monsters). Espero que consideraras dejar comentarios para la autora, Nayen, por allá en Wattpad si te gusta la historia.
> 
> **_Important Announcement!_** The original story in Spanish is now available only on [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/story/166655788-the-monsters). I hope you will consider leaving feedback for the author, Nayen, over on Wattpad if you like the story.
> 
> **Author's Notes:** This story will be a sci-fi + omegaverse AU. It’s really inspired by Mad Max: Fury Road, and the story takes place in a universe very similar to the one in that movie. When you picture Eddie, you can think of him looking just like Tom Hardy in Mad Max.
> 
> **Translator's Notes:** Muchísimas gracias a la autora, NayenLemunantu, por darme su permiso para traducir esta encantadora historia. Es mi primera obra de traducción, así que apreciaría mucho si algún lector/a bilingüe estuviera dispuesto a ayudarme como “beta de traducción”—dejame un comentario si puedes ayudar. <3
> 
> Many thanks to the author, NayenLemunantu, for giving me her permission to translate this lovely story. It’s my first translated work, so I would super appreciate it if any bilingual reader would be willing to help me as a “translation beta”—leave me a comment if you can help. <3

Hope is a mistake.  
If you can’t fix what’s broken,  
you’ll go insane.

–Max Rockatansky, _Mad Max_

It was winter in the year 2587…although it had become impossible to distinguish between summer and winter.

The world had changed radically in just a couple decades; the Third World War had submerged the planet into a slow agony.

The war had begun after the food started to get scarce.

The steady population increase made it clear that the planet could not accommodate everyone anymore. The growing contamination had made resources dwindle and the land’s productivity lessen, desertification doing nothing but accelerating the crisis, and soon the entire world was at war.

The arms race of recent years had given many countries enough military power to withstand such a conflict. Nuclear weapons had done the rest of the work.

The great cities of the known world were destroyed.  The sparse survivors abandoned the rubble and took refuge from pests and hunger as far away as possible from population centres, but the scarcity of food and medicines, and the changing climactic conditions of the planet, managed to annihilate more than 80% of the global population.

When the war finally ended after three decades of constant combat, the world had changed permanently. The nauseating atmosphere annihilated 70% of life on the planet, nitrous oxide destroyed a great part of the ozone layer, and solar radiation brutally struck the earth. Part of the ocean evaporated and the excess carbon dioxide acidified the water. In this new, ultra-dry climate, forests disappeared and now desert covered more than half of the new world.

The earth was a dead place much before the others arrived—the monsters.

The monsters were alien organisms, parasites. They took control of your body, eating through you, living through you, and even, in the rarest cases, reproducing with you—and when they left you, you would die. There was no way to know that you were infected until they decided to show themselves, emerge from your body and take control of it.

On Earth, because of the radiation, most humans were infertile. But there were a few, called “specimens,” who could still procreate. These were the monsters’ trophies. The rest were slaves.

The monsters had a hierarchical class system much like the human one: Alphas, Betas, and Omegas. Their most powerful Alphas claimed humans and paired with them, creating more and more monsters…insatiable monsters who were parasitic enough to destroy the world.

Eddie had been an Alpha once. He’d had a wife, Anne, and a daughter, Esperanza. But he hadn’t been able to protect them, and now he was nothing. Without class, without rank, without pack—an outcast, a flesh-and-bone ghost who wandered the world, fleeing, always fleeing.


	2. highway warriors

_“What a lovely day! Today has dawned sunny once again, a lovely day for all the highway warriors. I live, I die, I live again!”_

The masculine voice that blared from the Interceptor’s radio was the only human companionship that Eddie had had in years. He had no idea if it was a real person or not; it might have been an old recording of someone now living six feet under, some program that repeated itself over and over again. Eddie didn’t care. Nor was he paying attention to what the voice said; he just enjoyed hearing a human voice that wasn’t his own. He could spend hours listening to the subtle nuances of that raspy voice, the emphasis that he put on certain words, the passion with which he expressed himself, the almost-imperceptible breath between sentences.

_“Today is a good day to die on the road! Die in glory and you will drive eternally, shining and chrome on the highways of Valhalla. But be careful, warriors! The monsters are always on the prowl.”_

Eddie knew it well. It was why he always kept himself in motion, fleeing. A lone man on the road didn’t present a threat, but he would fetch a price—one more person to enslave. He looked in his rear-view, as was his habit, and confirmed for the umpteenth time that day that there was no one following him, nor any other living human face in hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of sheer desert.

_“But the monsters are not invincible—remember that, brothers. They’re vulnerable to loud sounds and to fire. Keep your bonfire burning and you can surely throw one of those monsters back into the space trashcan that they came from. Long life to all road warriors! There is no better death than to die fighting. I live, I die, I live again!”_

The energetic voice of the man on the radio started to cut out, and soon static had completely replaced him. Eddie turned the knob, shutting off the radio. He looked West and saw in the distance that the enormous sandstorm, which had caused the interference with his radio signal, was getting closer by the second. He would have to find shelter soon—he couldn’t keep driving in the middle of a storm like that.

In the new world, sandstorms like this were commonplace: literal walls of suspended dust moving in relentless gusts that spanned various leagues in height and breadth, some even accompanied by electrical storms. Driving in the middle of one of those storms was dangerous not only because you had no visibility, but also because the suspended sand could damage the vehicle’s motor and even filter into its interior, causing the driver to asphyxiate. Eddie had too much experience driving on the Mother Highway to be ignorant of how dangerous these storms were.

Eddie pulled down the goggles that he had been wearing on top of his head and pulled his handkerchief up over his nose. He put on a pair of leather gloves and made sure his jacket was completely closed, covering the rest of his head with a long greasy cloth that he wrapped around his neck a few times. If he got trapped by the storm, the suspended sand, which moved at a lethal velocity, could crack open any uncovered skin in a matter of seconds.

He took a look at the map that he had on the passenger seat, located his new destination and turned right, leaving the highway to cross country in the direction of a shelter he had visited a couple years before. With a little luck he might also find some gasoline there. His map was ancient, from the time before the war when people still concerned themselves with making those kinds of things. Eddie had found it in an old, abandoned warehouse that he stumbled across on one of his trips, the time that he had gone as far North as he could. Although the geography was radically changed now, there were still landmarks in the landscape that he could recognize, which he used to orient himself. Throughout his years of travelling he had marked up the map, filling it with annotations and facts: infected places, dens of human packs, natural shelters, old gas stations, caches of food…

After thirty minutes or so driving through the desert, Eddie found the route he had been looking for: a smaller highway, one of those secondary roads. He turned right again and this time put his foot on the accelerator, pressing down toward the floor. The motor roared and the car jumped forward, reaching its maximum velocity in less than ten seconds. Eddie looked backward through his rear window—the storm almost had him in its grasp.

He drove an old Ford Falcon XB GT that he had named "the Interceptor." It had been adapted with two extra gas tanks installed over the trunk, covering the entire rear of the vehicle, to increase its speed capabilities. Eddie himself had modded the motor, improving it in ways that would have been unimaginable in pre-war times so that it operated with minimal fuel consumption. This allowed Eddie to travel the highways constantly for almost two months without needing to stop for gas.

In the new world there were still places to get provisions, always controlled by packs of non-infected humans; the monsters didn’t need gasoline to survive, so they had never shown a great interest in it. Those places were called “gasoline cities” and in all his years travelling, Eddie had encountered three in total: the first, many leagues to the North on the Mother Highway; another to the South, close to the canyons; and the other to the East near the sea. These were highly fortified places, protected by patrols of ferocious Alphas armed to the teeth, who controlled entry and the interchange of fuel. These soldiers would kill you without a single moment of hesitation just on the suspicion that you might be infected, so Eddie tried to keep himself as far away as possible from those cities. He preferred to swallow any other option before chancing it there.

A renegade Alpha like him was not well regarded by any pack. He would rather take his chances with little old gasoline caches abandoned along the road; that was an acceptable risk. Usually they were empty, or occupied by one or two people—renegades like him—but one could never be sure because they could also be infected. Eddie was used to spending entire days outside of these caches, studying them from hundreds of metres away from a secure position, until he could convince himself that they were unoccupied.

Eddie tore his gaze away from the storm and checked the Interceptor’s gauges. The majority of them didn’t work perfectly, but he knew well what his car could handle. He began watching the road again and gripped the wheel a little tighter. He wasn’t carrying any gas, and it had already been time to re-equip himself with provisions—not just gasoline, but also water and food.

In the new world it practically never rained. The little dew that fell was too acidic for human consumption, or for the few farmable plants that had survived. Although it didn’t seem to hurt the monsters; it seemed that they were able to regenerate any of their hosts' body parts that got misshapen due to radiation or acid rain. They only needed one thing to survive: food. And humans were their favourite dish.

What remained of humanity, those who had not yet become infected, had regrouped into small packs, extremely hierarchical groups each led by a strong, pure-blooded Alpha and surrounded by other loyal Alphas who were their soldiers, their War Boys. Omegas, because of being physically weaker than the other classes, were more scarce. At the same time, the few healthy and fertile Omegas remaining were now trophies that not only the monsters coveted—the Alphas did, too. There were literal wars between the remaining packs to accumulate new Omegas, and it didn’t matter how many Alphas died in these raids so long as they got at least one healthy, fertile Omega to add to their pack.

Eddie knew it well. Anne and Esperanza had died in one of those attacks, and he, their Alpha, had been unable to protect them.

They hadn’t been part of a pack, couldn’t count on the protection of a group—Eddie wasn’t willing to share Anne with any other Alpha. So they had become highway nomads, always in motion, without a den, without a pack, without bonds, without family, just the two of them against the world. Then Esperanza had been born, their hope, and they had formed their little pack. He could recall with perfect clarity the details of the day he held her in his arms for the first time, believing that there had still been light in this dying world. Eddie himself had helped Anne during the birth, and had looked into the eyes of his newborn daughter knowing that she was the best gift life had given him.

Years had passed for their little pack, just the three of them against the world. Little Esperanza grew strong, thanks to the bond she had with her parents. Back then Eddie had been a powerful Alpha, ferocious and furious in defence of his little pack, with an imposing presence that could chase off weaker Alphas for hundreds of miles around—not the fragile dispossessed person that he was now. And Anne had been a caring Omega, busy procuring the best she could for her pup. Both of them had raised her in love and fierceness, teaching her to defend herself, to survive.

They should have always been ready.

But the day of the attack, no preparation could have helped them. Eddie hadn’t been able to do anything—they were attacked in broad daylight, in the middle of the highway, inside their car. Esperanza was six years old, her class traits still undefined because those appeared during adolescence, but Eddie and Anne believed that she was an Omega. They considered themselves fortunate, having received a double treasure from life, but a dangerous treasure that carried an enormous responsibility.

The War Boys who attacked them came out of nowhere. The group were all Betas, so Eddie couldn’t detect their scent until they were dangerously close, surrounding them with five war rigs—small armoured trucks reinforced with sharp, spiny lances forged from iron. Eddie tried to get away, seeking refuge in a nearby canyon, but he couldn’t reach it. The War Boys cut off the path and threw explosive flash-bangs at their wheels. They weren’t going to shoot, because they didn’t want to harm the two Omegas that they were trying to capture, but they did jump on top of the car until they were able to pull Annie through the window.

She died falling from the rig, trying to get back to Eddie in the car. She fell, and the wheels rolled over her. Esperanza died later, when Eddie could no longer keep control of the car whose tire they had burst. Both of them emerged suspended from the car and crashed against the merciless desert.

When the War Boys reached them, they didn’t even take time to look at Eddie—he didn’t present any threat. But they did look Esperanza up and down, swearing quietly over their loss: a young and healthy Omega. She wasn’t dead yet, but she had an iron spike stuck in her chest and was losing blood fast. When the pack’s Alpha leader arrived, he killed her with a blow to the head. A mercy kill, he explained. Then they left.

Eddie they abandoned to die in the desert, with his body half-submerged in sand, an arm and a leg broken and his sanity hanging on by a thread. He shouted, roared, wept until his voice was gone—not for his broken bones, for hunger or thirst, nor for the blazing sun burning his skin relentlessly—but for his destroyed family. He lived in agony for days, without wanting to move more than to crawl to Esperanza’s body and embrace her. He sought death, prayed for it, but his pleas were never answered.

When it had been two weeks since the accident, he was rescued by one of the inhabitants of the nearby canyon caves, a toothless and smiling old lady. She buried Esperanza, and then brought Eddie to her shelter, feeding him and healing him until he had the strength to stand up.  But when he did, Eddie had changed forever. He was no longer a true Alpha. His fierceness and power had been trampled, he was humiliated and hurt, and his once-dominant scent had weakened to the point where it was almost imperceptible. 

But Eddie had survived, that was his destiny, and he convinced himself that the reason was so that he could seek revenge. Maybe not right away, or even within one or two years, but one day Eddie was going to kill with his own two hands the Alpha who had annihilated his family.

This had happened twelve years earlier, and in the passage of that time, Eddie lost his sanity. Even today he could still hear Anne shouting, Esperanza sobbing, the smell of her body rotting at his side. Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night bathed in sweat, yelling and crying like a baby, terrified by reliving their deaths again, accosted by guilt because he hadn’t been able to protect them, and beleaguered by ghosts. He distanced himself from the world like never before and avoided entering into a relationship with anyone new at all costs.

Eddie had lost count of the years he had spent without bumping into another human being. Sometimes he saw a few from afar, but he never got too close. He didn’t feel ready to establish any type of connection again, and moreover one could never know who was infected.

He returned to reality when the first grains of sand started to hit the glass of his rear window, a small but sharp rattling sound against the metal. He looked in the rear-view again and confirmed that the storm had arrived. He kept his eyes fixed on the road and forced the motor a little more. The shelter was around the next curve—the reason Eddie had come here.

In the space of a few minutes, Eddie could see it from afar. It was a low, long building made entirely of concrete, half-submerged in sand. He accelerated until he was close to the entrance, and when he was just metres away, he hit the brakes. He suddenly burst through curtains of fire and almost collided with the back door, but he was able to brake with only centimetres to spare.

He got out of the car and ran for the doors to close them and keep the storm out. Then he lowered his goggles and pulled off the kerchief from his head and mouth, looking around. Everything was empty and silent—he could only hear the storm raging outside—but Eddie didn’t trust it. He took his rifle and walked around to check the place out.

On the first floor he didn’t find anything more than discarded trash, scattered papers, open food cans, bits of wood burnt here and there, and a few useless rags. He didn’t hear anything, but Eddie still suspected that someone had slept here very recently, someone who had gone to the trouble of making a nest.

And soon the scent came to him—very subtle, almost imperceptible at first, but stronger as soon as he caught it—it was coming from underground. He tightened his grip on the rifle a little more and went down. The staircase had two sections: it went down in a straight line and then toward the bottom it veered off to the left. As he descended the scent became more and more intense, while the light got more scarce. Eddie turned on the flashlight on his rifle, but his visibility was limited. He could only trust his pack instincts. Once he was downstairs, Eddie traversed the perimeter aiming his rifle, but he didn’t see anything at first—just disorganized boxes, empty shelves, and more trash.

He advanced down a corridor until he was approaching an interior room inside the open floor plan, a small room of reinforced concrete. He was certain that someone else was here, although he couldn’t say if it seemed like a non-infected person or a monster. He swallowed hard and advanced. He opened the door just a bit and took aim.

Inside the room there was a transparent capsule, small and tube-shaped, made from a glass-like material unlike anything Eddie had seen before. There was something enclosed inside it, something moving, a black viscous mass in constant motion. In front of it there was a man, an old man, dressed only in rags. When the light from Eddie’s flashlight hit him he turned suddenly and let out a laugh before shouting,

“I found one! I found one of the monsters!”


	3. i live, i die, i live again

Eddie ran his light up and down the man’s body, inspecting him. He hadn’t stopped aiming the rifle at him for a moment, because he had no way of knowing if he was infected or not unless the monster decided to show itself. In any case, he seemed to be a normal, clean human. The subtle scent that he gave off indicated that he was an Omega, but one of the many who had become infertile because of the radiation.

The man was more than thin, almost skeletal, his vertebrae protruding from his curved back. The rags he was wearing barely covered his body, his scrawny legs and muscle-less arms exposed. Barefoot and unarmed. He was old, maybe one of the oldest humans Eddie had seen in his life. He had a few sparse hairs growing on his head, an untidy beard of pure white, and deep wrinkles furrowing his skin. Every time that he let out a strident cackle one could see the last yellowed stumps that had once been teeth—and he laughed a lot. Too much.

Eddie hadn’t seen another car outside, nor inside the warehouse. He had no idea how the old man had gotten here, but he did seem to be alone.

“I found one!” the old man shouted again, raising his arms to the sky.

Eddie deflected the light from his flashlight and aimed the rifle away. A couple metres behind the old man there was a glass capsule, tube-shaped, no longer than Eddie’s arm but wider. Inside it, a black and viscous substance moved ceaselessly. Eddie swallowed hard, with his gaze fixed on the old man, but now he was aiming at the capsule. He didn’t budge; he didn’t dare make one false move.

“What is this?” Eddie asked. His voice, serious and masculine, seemed more raspy to him than usual from disuse, almost scratching his throat as it came out. “Is it one of them?”

Eddie had never seen one of those monsters in this state, without a host. Until now, he had never been able to imagine what form they would take when they weren’t in the body of another living being, and what he saw repulsed and fascinated him at the same time. Those super powerful monsters, who had brought the human race to the edge of extinction, seemed so fragile without a host to sustain them…. He hadn’t stopped aiming his rifle at the capsule, even though he knew it was useless—bullets wouldn’t hurt a monster.

“Yes, it’s a monster! It’s one of them!” The old man turned around and stayed still, looking lost. He didn’t seem to take notice of Eddie, nor fear him, even though Eddie hadn’t stopped aiming the rifle at him. “They abandoned it here, they left, its own monster-brothers. They shut it up in that capsule and abandoned it. A punishment.”

“How do you know?”

“Those are no human-made capsules. Anyway, if a human happened to meet one of these monsters, it would kill them, why would it leave them alive? No…this is something of their own.”

“Why would the aliens do something like this to one of their own species?”

“A punishment. Did something prohibited. A punishment,” the old man repeated. “Or maybe it got left behind because it was too weak…who knows?” He bent forward, almost close enough to tap the capsule’s glass with his nose, without showing even the tiniest speck of fear. Eddie noticed the old man’s back as he bent: he had scars all over his body, brands made with a hot iron: the mark of ownership from a pack.

“Those monsters chose our planet for something, maybe because we resemble them more than we’d like to think. We abandon the weakest, too…” His voice was getting softer little by little, and Eddie wondered if in that moment the old man was talking about himself. “This world is only for the strong, those who are able to survive.”

For the first time since arriving, Eddie let down his guard, stopped aiming the rifle, and slung it across his back. He took a couple steps forward and to the right, circling the capsule. The creature enclosed in it moved, like a reflection of Eddie’s movements, as if it could feel him, as if it sought him, as if it were looking at him.

“Are you an Alpha?” the old man suddenly asked, sniffing deeper and deeper in Eddie’s direction. He could see his nostrils flaring, like an animal on the hunt. “What type of Alpha are you? You don’t have a presence, no scent, nothing…”

Eddie didn’t answer, preferring to tip his head toward the monster. It wasn’t that he felt like an Alpha exactly, maybe he had been once, but that had been a long, long time ago…perhaps in another life.

“Look at this!” the old man shouted suddenly. He bent and grabbed a scrap of iron from the floor, raising it up with a groaning sound. “They don’t like noises.”

First he gave a couple little taps at one end of the capsule, on the part that was made from metal, and then passed the iron scrap over the glass, making a horrible strident sound. The creature inside twisted as if it were convulsing.

The grating sound against the glass made Eddie want to twist himself up, too. Suddenly he became aware of another noise, one that he didn’t feel in his ears, but in his mind: a sharp chill, an anguished cry of pain. He covered his ears with his hands and gasped.

“What is that?! What’s that noise?” The old man kept laughing, without stopping his scraping on the capsule. He didn’t seem to hear the creature crying out, and Eddie wondered if that was because he was a weak, deficient, sick human, or because the creature had been speaking to Eddie alone. “Stop! Leave it alone already!” He snatched the scrap of iron from the old man and threw it far away.

The old man took a couple stumbling paces backwards until he could stabilize himself, sitting on one of the empty metal shelves. He kept looking at Eddie with his brow furrowed and a furious expression in his small eyes. He spat on the floor and approached him again. Eddie took the rifle and aimed it once again at the old man.

“What, you care about a monster?” the old man asked.

“You might be damaging the glass of the capsule.” Eddie’s voice sounded calm, neutral, but with a slight touch of warning. The authority of the Alpha Eddie had once been made the old man pause and back off. “It could escape.”

“You wouldn’t happen to be one of _those_ types of Alphas, would you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“They say that at the beginning, when they had only just arrived, lots of Alphas joined with the monsters willingly, to become more powerful.” The old man spat on the floor again and looked away, forgetting all about Eddie. He started murmuring curses in a voice so quick and quiet that it was impossible to understand him until he returned his gaze to Eddie and seemed to come back to reality. He growled under his breath and continued. “The monsters have always been interested in Alphas—they’re the strongest, you understand? More resistant. They never join with Betas, much less Omegas, at least unless they get very desperate…”

“And how does an old man like you know so much about them?”

Eddie hadn’t stopped aiming the rifle at him. He didn’t seem dangerous, or at the very least he knew that if he tried anything against Eddie he could stop him easily. Although he had already realized that the old man was completely crazy, it did seem like he had known great things in his time. Maybe he had been a scribe, a person charged with preserving the memories of their pack.

“I’m older than I look. I was part of a pack once, not always the dispossessed person that you see now…”

The old man let out a sigh, and suddenly all of the vitality that he had shown until then disappeared, and he was left only as he was—a living skeleton. He turned around and was lost in the shadows of the warehouse. Eddie heard him rifling around in the piles of junk that were collapsed over there, looking for something. Soon he returned, carrying a few planks in his scrawny arms. He arranged them on the floor in front of Eddie, and afterwards went back, lost again in the shadows. When he appeared again, he brought with him logs and paper, and a few cans of food.

He went to his knees on the floor and arranged the planks in the shape of a tipi, with the paper in the middle. In a matter of minutes, the bonfire was sizzling, illuminating the entire room. Eddie looked it over: the white walls, some broken glass, furniture (also white), laboratory equipment, old computers. It seemed to have been some kind of research centre, but there was no way of knowing because it had been ransacked long ago. When he was finished inspecting the room, and without meaning to, his gaze once more ran into the creature enclosed inside the capsule. Now it was very still, as if all its attention was on Eddie. A shiver went down his spine and he quickly looked away, nervous.

The old man had put a big jar of preserves on the fire, an empty one that he used as a pot. Inside he had emptied the other two jars and was sitting on the floor in front of the bonfire, stirring the broth with a piece of wood.

“I was here when they came, I knew the Earth before the monsters came down from the sky,” the old main said. Eddie stared at him, intrigued. The old man was looking at the pot, speaking to himself. “Afterwards I was discarded, thrown away. Useless. But before I was left to die, without a pack, without a den, without bonds, without family…I had seen many things—atrocities, abominations—in my already-too-long life.” He lifted his gaze suddenly and fixed his dark eyes on Eddie. “Come! Share the fire with me. I don’t have much food, but I’ll share it with you tonight.”

Eddie took a couple of strong strides toward him and let himself collapse, sitting in front of the bonfire with his rifle resting on his legs. He took off the goggles that he still had on his head, the kerchief and the gloves. He ruffled his hair with his hands, and a mountain of sand and dust fell over his shoulders, his legs, and the floor. The storm had gotten sand even into his lungs. He was sure that if he coughed hard enough, he could have spat out half a kilo of sand and dust.

He saw the soup that the old man hadn’t stopped stirring, heat from the fire making it give off a delicious smell, even though it was just a few greens swimming in a dark broth. He moistened his lips with his tongue, realizing all of a sudden how hungry and thirsty he was. His mouth began to water and he felt how chapped his lips had gotten from the sun and the sand.

“You’re a strong specimen,” said the old man. Eddie lifted his gaze from the flames to see him across the cookfire, his dark eyes fixed on him, inspecting him. “Yes, a strong Alpha! Although there’s something wrong with your scent…What happened to you?"

Eddie didn’t answer him. He looked away, and without meaning to, his eyes caught on the alien capsule again. The creature continued to be still, but Eddie could feel its presence, its attention fixed on him. He frowned and looked back at the old man.

“How long have you been here?” he asked.

“A couple months.”

“Are you alone?"

“I haven’t seen another human soul in years. I was starting to think I was the only one left in the world.”

“The being…the alien.” Eddie tilted his head toward the capsule. “Was it here when you arrived?”

“It was here. Who knows how long it’s been here? Abandoned, without a pack…like us.”

“So they can survive without a host, without food…”

The old man shrugged his shoulders and stirred the broth that was cooking inside the bowl without paying attention to anything else, lost in his thoughts again. After a while in silence, he divided up the food and gave a smaller bowl to Eddie. He took it gratefully and drank it without wasting a single drop, even though he had no idea what it was he was eating. When he finished, he wiped his chin with the back of his hand and made a thankful gesture with his head. He was unable to say thank you openly, he didn’t know how….Nor was he able to remember the last time he had shared anything with another human being.

“The belly is full, and now it’s time to sleep,” sang the old man. He left the empty bowl next to the bonfire and stretched out on the floor, turning his back to Eddie. “Sleep. The storm will last all night. Sleep, and in the morning you’ll be able to leave."

Eddie looked toward the ceiling, as if he wanted to inspect the sky, then tipped his head and listened silently. He could still hear the roaring of the sandstorm outside, battering everything in its path. After all, what the old man had said made sense. He sighed, left the rifle beside the fire and got to his feet.

He walked slowly toward the capsule, coming close to the glass and looking fixedly at the creature. He felt something, something indescribable, something that he could feel in his chest, like a subtle mutual recognition. Without knowing what he was really doing, he stretched out his hand toward the capsule and put it against the glass. The creature, on the other side, moved restlessly against the glass until part of that formless mass raised up, forming little by little something very much like a human hand: a palm and five fingers that stretched out until they landed on the glass, just in front of Eddie’s hand, as if it were a reflection. In response, the cold surface of the glass seemed to suddenly become hot. Eddie was so startled that he snatched his hand back as if the contact had burned him.

“What are you doing?” the old man asked at his back.

Eddie startled, almost jumped from fright, and when he was paying attention again he noticed that the old man was right behind him. He wondered, nervously, how much he had seen.

“It has to be killed,” the old man said pointedly. “It’s a monster, we should kill it.”

“No!” Eddie spun around. He put out his hand, reflexively, to take up his rifle, and only at that moment did he remember that he had left it beside the bonfire. He glanced over at the fireplace looking for it, but the rifle wasn’t there. He looked at the old man again and found the rifle in his hands.

“Why don’t you want to kill it?” the old man shouted, lifting the rifle and aiming it. “Maybe you’re one of them!”

“To kill it we have to open the capsule and if we do that it could escape,” Eddie answered calmly, without moving an inch, waiting for the precise moment to act and get the rifle back. “And what’s worse, it could infect us.”

“We shouldn’t leave one of those monsters alive. You heard the talk on the radio too, didn’t you? I know you heard it, you ought to have a radio in that car of yours…and the Immortan’s transmissions are the only thing you can listen to.”

“The Immortan?”

“The Immortan, yes, that’s his name! The Immortan who calls his War Boys to the fight. I live, I die, I live again!”

“You’re crazy.” Eddie looked him up and down, shocked. He was crazier than Eddie had thought to begin with, and now he understood just how dangerous the old man was: a man without his sanity was capable of anything. “Don’t even think of opening that capsule, or we’ll both die here!”

“Death isn’t the end,” he said, laughing. “Death is only the beginning! Glorious death allows the highway warriors to ascend to Valhalla. We’ll drive eternally, my friend, shiny and chrome.”

“You’re talking just like that fanatic on the radio. You’re brainwashed.”

“Yes, yes, yes! Valhalla awaits us!” he shouted. He took the rifle more firmly between his fleshless arms, supporting the stock with his forearm. “Witness me, brother!”

And he fired.


	4. symbiosis

Eddie heard the sound of the rifle firing, and in two seconds he had fallen face down on the floor, covering his head with both hands. It took him a second to realize that the old man hadn’t been shooting at him, as he had feared, but at the capsule.

Fortunately, the capsule wasn’t made of glass but of some other transparent material that seemed too durable to belong on Earth. That was the other thing that Eddie was given to understand: the old man had been right in believing that the creature had been enclosed in there by members of its own species. It almost seemed as if the capsule was a prison that the monsters themselves had created, that they themselves had been the ones to incarcerate one of their own. They had condemned it and abandoned it to its own luck, to die slowly all alone, far from any pack or host. And if that were true, the material that this prison had been constructed from came from that very same planet where the monsters had been born—and it wasn’t indestructible.

Despite the deafening sound of the bullets, Eddie clearly heard it when the capsule broke. It was a smooth snap, but so loud that it obscured all the other sounds around it and froze him from head to toe. He craned his neck to look toward the capsule and watched it shatter into a million pieces. Soon, the hail of bullets fell onto the creature. It seemed to absorb the projectiles into its formless body, although it didn’t show any signs of resulting injury because Eddie didn’t see anything that looked like blood coming out of it. Nonetheless, he began to feel that anguished cry for help, a telepathic shout that made him react almost without thinking about it, instinctively.

He crawled on hands and knees until he was close to the old man. He was laughing as he fired, with his eyes half-shut and his head tilted back, as if he were a maniac. He was completely out of it. Nor did he notice when Eddie stood up from the floor with a rapid motion, taking the rifle from him and giving him a blow full on the face with the gun stock. He fell to the floor with a dry thump, raising a cloud of dust.

Eddie looked down on him from above, panting, trembling from head to toe and soaked in cold sweat. He turned around slowly, looking for the creature. Now it was very still, almost motionless, except for a few small shivers that ran up and down its formless body. It had also stopped communicating with Eddie—it was very quiet, only emitting a smooth vibration, as if it were very weak.

Eddie approached it, stepping cautiously. He let the rifle fall to the floor and closed the distance separating them. He felt like a moth drawn fatally to the flames. It was like a magnetic force impelled him to draw near to that being, and not only that, but he also felt a strong imperative to assure himself that it was alright, even to watch over it.

He arrived at the capsule and stretched out his hand in its direction. In response, the creature turned over on itself and repeated the trick that it had done just a moment ago. Part of its body separated itself and formed, little by little, the shape of a human hand exactly like Eddie’s. Both hands drew close together, but this time there wasn’t anything between them to impede their contact. So Eddie’s hand and the creature’s hand touched, just the tips of the fingers at first, then the palms, until their fingers intertwined and squeezed firmly.

Eddie was amazed. The sensation was something unique, something that made him feel full. He had become accustomed to feeling only pain and emptiness, and never expected to feel anything else ever again. But it wasn’t spoken, the thing he was feeling, it was something difficult to explain and absorb, because until that moment he had never realized how little he had felt all his life. Not just after losing Annie and Esperanza, but always. All his life he had been hollow, and now that emptiness inside his chest had been filled. It was as if he had found a missing part of himself—his complement, his other.

He closed his eyes and sighed, ecstatic, smiling as he had never believed he would do again. When he closed his eyes, the sensations intensified and he felt the contact with the creature not only on his hand, but on all his skin like a cold vibration, an electrical current travelling over all of him. Eddie opened his eyes to see how the creature had risen up on his hand, coiling around his arm in a spiral and being absorbed into his skin.

Only then did Eddie understand. They were uniting, melting into one. 

“The monster…”

The old man’s voice came from behind Eddie. Hearing it, Eddie awoke from the trance and turned to see him. He was still lying on the floor, barely raised up on one elbow, with a horrible wound in the middle of his face, blood running constantly from his nose and chin.

“Where is the monster?” he asked, slowly getting to his feet, looking in all directions worriedly. “Escaped?”

Eddie grabbed him by the neck and squeezed his trachea, applying all the strength he had in his hands without showing even a little compassion. Seeing him, he felt blinded by an inexplicable rage.

“And whose fault do you think that is?” he asked with a growl, fury dancing on the surface of his eyes.

“Y-your s-scent—“ the old man choked out, almost unable to speak because of the pressure from Eddie’s hand on his throat. “Your s-scent hhah…has ch-changed.”

Eddie opened his eyes, surprised. He saw the fear painted in the old man’s cloudy eyes, the sweat that soaked his temples, the tremor of his body trying to make itself small, retreating. Eddie knew these responses well, but so many years had passed since the last time he had seen them that it took him a minute to realize: it was the natural reaction of an Omega in submission before the presence of an Alpha.

It startled Eddie, and he retreated a couple steps until he bumped against the capsule, which fell to the floor with a deafening sound that thundered with even greater force in his ears. He raised his hands to his temples and gasped, shocked. All of a sudden his senses had intensified. They were overwhelmed by new sensations that were too strong to take in: the roar of the storm outside drilled into his head, the Omega scent of the old man repelled him, and a voracious hunger seized him that ate at his insides.

“It’s inside you,” the old man said, staring at him with eyes wide as saucers. “You’re one of those monsters now. You’re a monster!"

**_Don’t listen to him, Eddie_.**

Eddie jumped, frowning and looking in all directions, frightened, but he didn’t see anyone except the old man. But that made sense, because he had heard those words inside his head. They came from a menacing, deep, reverberating voice, as if an echo repeated over and over again inside the curved walls of a cave.

“Who said that?" 

“It’s the monster,” the old man said. “The monsters always speak to their hosts by thought, it’s not the first time I’ve seen it…. At the beginning, we thought they had lost their minds, that they were talking to themselves…our Alphas.” The old man shook his head and sketched a sad smile. He seemed lost in his thoughts again, deep and painful memories. “Can you imagine? How helpless we all felt, believing that our Alphas, our protectors, had gone crazy? We understood the truth when it was too late, when those monsters had infected almost our entire pack. If only one person had been stronger in that moment,” he sighed.

His voice trembled. Soon, two fat tears slipped down his dry and scrawny cheeks, freeing a silent cry that was nonetheless filled with anguish. “I won’t make the same mistake again. Back then I wasn’t capable of killing my Alpha and saving my pack, but now I will not hesitate to do it. I’m sorry, but I am going to have to kill you.”

There was a brief moment when Eddie didn’t really understand what the old man meant. He looked at him with his brow furrowed and his mouth tightened into a firm line. Then, in a fraction of a second Eddie came to the realization that the old man was glancing out the corner of his eye at the rifle, which had been thrown to the floor right in the middle between the two of them—and Eddie understood. The old man looked him in the eye, troubled, and both knew what would happen next. 

The threw themselves to the floor, both trying to get control of the gun, but the old man was quicker--surprising, given his years. He managed to swipe the rifle and raised it with a frenetic motion, aiming it at Eddie. Eddie moved by instinct, grabbed the barrel that the old man had aimed directly at his face and tried to use all his strength to turn his aim aside.

They struggled on the floor for a minute, until something happened that made the old man throw the rifle to the floor and made Eddie freeze from dread. His hands, the large, strong hands of an Alpha, were clinging firmly to the barrel of the gun—but suddenly they began to transform into a strange black colour. It was a viscous, plastic material that was coming out of his pores, covering his hands with a smooth but strong substance. Eddie watched, horrified, how his hands grew in size, covered by that blackish substance, as his fingers stretched and grew into enormous, sharp black claws and the strength of his grip increased.

He went stumbling to his feet, just like the old man, and stood there stunned, looking on in horror as that substance slowly descended along his arms, threatening to cover them completely.

“It’s impossible,” the old man said, backing up. His eyes were wide open, just like his mouth. “The bond never forms that fast.”

“What is happening to me?!” Eddie shouted. The black substance had already covered his shoulders, and now he could feel it rising up his chest and his back.

Eddie gasped seeing how it was slowly expanding over his entire body. It was the strangest sensation he had ever experienced. Where the substance touched his bare skin it was damp, smooth, and cold, like nothing he had felt before. And as it covered him, it began to increase in volume, like a suit of armour that moulded itself perfectly to every curve of his body.

Without realizing when it had happened, a feeling of pure euphoria had possessed him. He felt powerful, strong and dominant, like he hadn’t felt for years. Testosterone and Alpha energy coursed through his limbs—he could feel them flowing in his skin. He felt like he was boiling over with interior power. 

The substance came over the back of his neck, smooth as silk, like a caress. Eddie felt a thrill. He closed his eyes and felt that black-coloured mass coming up the nape of his neck, tossing his head back in ecstasy. He felt it running up his jaw, taking possession of his cheekbones and closing itself just in front of his eyes.

The next thing that happened took place as if Eddie were in a trance. He saw what was happening from behind a fog that covered everything, and he felt as if it were something that someone else were doing, not he himself. Eddie could only pay attention to the powerful sensation that ran through his limbs, to how powerful he felt. Now he knew what people meant when they used the expression “drunk with power,” because that was exactly how he felt.

From inside the mist that clouded his vision, he saw the terrified face of the old man, his tears and the expression of infinite sorrow in his eyes. Eddie began to realize that it wasn’t fear that he felt but regret, before huge jaws filled with a double row of long pointed teeth like some mythological beast closed over the old man’s head and ripped it off.

When he came back to himself, Eddie was on his knees on the floor with a foggy head, trembling from head to toe, soaked in cold sweat, with his face and neck covered in blood.

He looked up and saw the old man’s body collapsed near the stove, more skeletal than ever and with his neck just a bloody stump. He ran his gaze over the rest of the place and didn’t see any sign of the head. Just then he tasted the thick, salty, metallic flavour in his mouth.

“No, no, no, no…” he whispered, covering his eyes with his hands and hitting himself on the head. “It can’t be…I didn’t do this.”

 ** _Eddie_ ,** rumbled the deep voice in his head. _**He wanted to hurt us, Eddie**_. 

“It can’t be,” said Eddie, letting himself fall to the floor. He had his eyes closed, covering them firmly with his hands, but it was no use because the voice that he didn’t want to hear reverberated inside his head. “I’m infected. I’m infected. I’m infected…”

 _ **Not infected, Eddie,**_ the voice rumbled once again inside his mind. _**We have united.**_

“No no no no no no…I won’t allow it, I won’t allow it.”

Eddie got up, wobbling, and stumbled forward in the darkness between the shelves of the store. When he got to the staircase he went up it almost crawling. He felt his vision get cloudy and a knot closed off his throat, restricting his breathing. It took him a few minutes to realize that he was crying, but he forced himself to continue forward. 

_**Eddie?** _asked the creature inside his head. Although its voice was deep and menacing, it carried a touch of urgency, almost fear. _**What are you doing, Eddie?**_

“I’m going to finish this once and for all.”

Eddie reached the doors of the store and opened them wide. Outside, the storm raged, ferocious and unstoppable, threatening to destroy everything in its path. Eddie didn’t even give it two seconds of thought. He gritted his teeth and entered the storm.

The wind and the sand impacted him all over, scraping the skin of his face and irritating his eyes. He couldn’t breathe, and the force of the wind made him stumble here and there.  Without a fixed course it seemed as though he were lost, but that wasn’t true. He knew that to kill one of those monsters you needed fire, or the very specific sounds that weakened them, but he also knew that without a host and without the capsule that preserved it in its natural climate, the creature would die sooner or later. Eddie knew it very well—that was why he had gone out into the storm: because to kill the creature, Eddie had to die first.


	5. ghosts on the prowl

Eddie was submerged in a sleep-like state, feverish and drowning in near-unconsciousness, although he was lucid enough to know that despite his intentions he was still living.  Eddie knew it with the kind of certainty that only happens in dreams. 

He felt a presence with him, around him, inside of him.  Someone else who stayed by his side, something intangible but with an overwhelming presence.  He didn’t know what they were about, but it was something Eddie didn’t recognise.  It was as if during all this time there had been an empty place in the centre of his chest, and now that emptiness had been filled by something more, something different, dense and dark, that made itself known as a pressure in his rib cage that almost prevented him from breathing.

Eddie gasped and moved around, uncomfortable, trying in vain to wake up.  It was in that instant that he heard a girl’s voice.  “Eddie!” the little shrill worried voice cried, “Papi, where are you?”  Eddie desperately wanted to get up and find her.  He could imagine the exact sweet smile that would appear on the girl’s face when she finally saw him, so he tried to fight against the heavy sleep and open his eyes to see her—but it was no use. 

The girl stretched out her hand to touch his cheek with the barest tips of her fingers, which were tiny and smooth and warm.  The contact was full of tenderness, such a real sensation….He wanted to move, to hold the small hand between his, but his body didn’t respond—he was paralysed.  The girl came closer to kiss his forehead, and where her mouth touched his skin it felt warm and smooth—Eddie could feel it, a real touch.  He caught the well-known scent of his own blood running in another’s veins.  Pack.  Family.  Bond.  Life. 

“Esperanza…” he barely whispered.  His voice came out rasping against his dry throat.  “It can’t be…you can’t be here.  You’re not real.”

The girl smiled at him.  “Everything’s possible if you believe, Eddie.”  Her voice had been so soft, so pure, that it made Eddie’s heart hurt.  And suddenly, the angelic face of the girl, framed by golden curls, acquired an relentless expression.  The smile transformed into a hard, accusing rictus, and she looked at him with her sky-blue eyes clouded with hatred.  “Where were you, Eddie?” asked the rage-filled voice.  “Where were you when you left me to die?”

Eddie startled and his hand moved instinctively toward his face, protecting him from the small accusing finger that she pointed at him relentlessly.  “You abandoned me!” the girl shouted.  “You left me to die!  You said you would protect me, that you would protect both of us.” 

Before Eddie’s eyes, he watched as a transmutation overtook the girl.  The smooth skin of her young face, her pretty gold hair glowing under the bracing light of the midday sun, the brightness of her big blue eyes like a surprised fawn—all of these suddenly became a mask that fell apart, shattered in pieces.  Bits of hair and human flesh were shedding from her bones, the girl’s sweet expression transfigured into the horrible mask of death.  Eddie shouted in horror and shut his eyes firmly, but he still saw the same accusing expression in those blue eyes, now bloodshot.

“ _No!”_   he sobbed and shook.  His shout kept reverberating in his head, stunning him.  “No, this isn’t real!  It’s a nightmare!”

A nightmare.  Those were nothing foreign to him—hallucinations had been a constant throughout his life, the ghosts of people he couldn’t protect always stalking him.  He saw them both awake and asleep, in dreams and nightmares.  In a certain way, they helped him to never feel alone.  He knew they were at his side at all times, strangling him with the guilt of having left them to die.

Later, he heard another voice, deeper and more euphoric, one that he recognised by its reverberation.  In that instant he realised that he was conscious, although it took him a few minutes to recognise that the voice was coming from one of those infernal radio transmissions.

“ _By my hand will the sins of this world be redeemed.  I am the balance of justice, director of the chorus of death.  The hour of our glorious revenge will come, my brothers, my War Boys, my highway warriors.  Sing, brothers, sing!  I am the one who touched the sun, I am_ —”

Eddie turned off the radio with a slap, although he didn’t have the strength to get up nor to open his eyes.  The fevered speech of the one they called the Immortan was replaced with an absolute, empty silence.

He was safe now.  He was alive, and he was conscious.

He felt something strange running over his body, something different from the abrasive sun that kept him pinned there, stunned and almost unable to move.  It was a soft movement, minimal, something that he could only feel if he concentrated on it, like the tiny footsteps of a small creature that ran over his legs and up his belly.

He opened his eyes with difficulty and they instantly began to close again, but he gave it another try.  First a quick glance, because the light was still blinding him, then another and another until his eyes got used to the excessive brightness.  He blinked a little and recognized the greasy and oxidised roof of the Interceptor, the leather of the seat sticking to his back and the burning heat that filtered through the open windows weighing down his muscles.  Eddie could feel the UV rays perforating his skin even though the thick brown leather of his pants.      

He tried to get up, but his body wouldn’t respond.  Instead, he let out a sad breath.  He tried to swallow and realized that his mouth was too dry, full of tiny grains of sand, his lips cracked from dehydration, not even a drop of saliva in his mouth.  Suddenly, he felt that soft movement again, the one that had awoken him at the beginning, and moved his hand in a quick strike to trap the creature.  It was a small lizard with two heads: a common animal in the desert plains of the new world.  He raised it to his mouth and tore off the head in a single bite.  It wasn’t his favourite dish, but he wasn’t in a position to waste free food.

When he could finally get up and take a look at the horizon, all he saw was kilometres and kilometres of abrasive desert wasteland.  The horrendous golden-brown colour and the smooth curves of the sand formed little mountains.  The heat made the horizon a diffuse, undulating line.  He had no idea where he was, nor how he had arrived there, but he was sure of one thing: he was very far from the old warehouse that he had used for a storm shelter, and far from its neighbouring mountains. 

He was thirsty, so much so that the blood from the lizard that he had just eaten hadn’t even moistened his tongue, although he could still taste the metallic and sour flavour in his mouth.  He was dehydrated, he knew, with lips and skin dried out by the abrasive sun that burned him more and more with every second. 

He passed both hands over his face and tried to wake himself up, hitting himself a little on the temples.  He was dizzy, sweaty, and feverish, but he came to realise that this was not due only to the state of dehydration in which he found himself; there was something else.  He felt sick, weak, close to death—but he refused to succumb to it.  Eddie had survived enough years in this insane world to know that stillness meant death, lingering at the mercy of a scavenger attack, or the territorial brawls of the remaining packs, or the monsters.  If he wanted to keep living, he had to move.

He straightened himself up in the seat and checked the fuel gauge out of habit, cursing under his breath when he remembered that it was broken.  He didn’t know how much gasoline was left in the tanks, not even if it was enough to travel an entire day driving, but if he knew anything it was that he would rather die trying.

He got the Interceptor moving, smiling when he heard the motors turn over before backfiring, leaving in the midst of a cloud of burning sand.  The first thing that he had to do was find somewhere with water, water and something to eat, and afterwards he should stock up on gas.  He needed to recharge both the car’s motors and his own, because it didn’t do him any good to have survived a sandstorm if he didn’t have the strength to keep moving afterward.

He was concentrating so hard on that primitive instinct that he didn’t stop to think about everything that had happened the previous night—assuming that only one night had passed, because in reality he didn’t have any idea how much time had passed while he lay unconscious in the desert.

It was getting close to nightfall when he saw from afar the mountainous road that generally served as a refuge to the desert scavengers: small groups of Alphas without Omegas who formed one big pack dedicated to attacking travellers, killing them in order to steal their automobiles and fuel.  Staying there was a risky prospect, because he might be attacked at any moment, but it was a risk he would rather run; staying in the desert would mean certain death.  At least in the mountains he knew that it was possible to find a source of water, maybe acidic and contaminated, but something that would serve to keep him from dying of dehydration.  And with a little luck, he might find food as well.  The few animals who had survived in the relentless climate of the new world lived in the shelters formed by dark caves, interconnected deep under the ground. 

But in the desert, distances were misleading, and when Eddie finally reached the mountains night had already fallen.  He had taken the precaution of driving with his lights off, hoping that in this way he wouldn’t be detected.  He wasn’t naïve enough to believe that he had passed unnoticed, because he knew that the scavengers had fixed lookouts in the canyons, but he hoped to be ignored.  He navigated by the weak light of the stars and by what they called his instincts, following the correct path by the scent in the air.

Everyone knew that the scavengers lived deep in the mountains, hidden in the wide valleys that formed between them.  They had well-guarded and fortified entryways, ready to dynamite half the mountain to close the passes the instant they felt threatened.  Eddie planned to seek refuge at the entrance to the mountains, as far away as possible from the scavengers’ territory, hoping to pass unnoticed being only one man.

The final stretch, the one that was under watch, he took by foot, crossing one by one the small peaks and valleys of the rocky wall.  The farther inside he had gone into the depths of the canyon, the more aware he became of the scent, the heavy presence of hundreds of Alphas living together in the same place that could be sensed for kilometres around.  It didn’t seem like the aura of one especially strong and powerful Alpha, but rather the concentrated scent of many of them.  Eddie covered his nose with his forearm and pushed down the impulse to vomit.  He had been in this sector before, exchanging merchandise, but he had never felt so much unease from scenting other members of his same species.

Another wave of nausea turned Eddie’s stomach, and this time it came accompanied by dizziness that prevented him from walking any farther.  He stopped when, followed by his instincts, he lost all the contents of his stomach and could feel only the bitter taste of bile churning in his mouth.  And although he felt stunned and sick, he made himself keep walking—even on hands and knees—until he found a place to shelter for the night. 

In the desert, temperatures dropped drastically at night, reaching several degrees below zero.  The perverse dichotomy of the new world: during the day, the abrasive heat burned them alive, and during the night they froze to death. 

Still shivering from cold and fever, Eddie made himself keep going until he found the perfect cave, wide and deep, that would allow him to keep the Interceptor next to him in the shelter.  When he finally found it, he was much too deep in hostile territory for his taste, but there was nothing to be done.

He returned to his car and in a matter of minutes he was secure in the profound darkness of the cave.  He moved forward on hands and knees, barely following one step with another, falling a couple of times on the treacherous, slippery stones, until he arrived at the back of the cave, where the wall of pure rock was moistened by the water that filtered up from the depths of the earth.  He licked until his face had found every crevice in the stone, until his tongue got scraped and it hurt him.  Only in that moment he let himself fall to his knees on the floor, dripping, feeling the intense relief of the damp earth against his feverish skin.

He had no idea how he had managed to get so far, because each breath felt like dying.  The fever hadn’t abated even a little; on the contrary, it had worsened to the point where it had him shivering, dizzy with nausea, dripping with sweat.  Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the torn-apart bodies of Esperanza and Anne.  The shouts, the broken glass, the blood soaking into the desert sand.

“Sorry,” whispered a thread of voice.  “I’m sorry…”

He balled himself up against another wave of pain, hugging himself and huddling in fetal position.  He didn’t have any idea why he had exerted himself so much just to find this cave; maybe it was just the force of habit.  But he felt sure that he was dying.  The fever was taking him with it, and if not the fever, it would be the pain. 

There was a lump in his throat that impeded his breathing, like an invisible fist that closed around his throat, and when the tears finally fell from his eyes, the fist loosened a few milimetres.  He cried as he hadn’t cried in a long time, from guilt, from anguish, and from the pain of knowing that he had failed the ones he loved most, feeling completely alone, without pack, without bonds, and without family…

“I’m sorry…I tried to protect them.  I tried.”

They were there, before his eyes, hand in hand with clear and accusing faces fixed on him.  Eddie knew that they were nothing more than a hallucination, but they looked so real that his heart clenched with pain.  Soon the two of them turned and moved away, walking calmly toward the entrance to the cave, their bare feet scarcely making a sound over the damp earth.

Eddie couldn’t endure the vision of them getting farther away, of their backs swaying with their calm walking, both with their golden hair resplendent in the darkness.

“Don’t leave me!” he shouted, stretching out his hand into the deep darkness.  “Don’t leave me here alone…”

 ** _Eddie_** , whispered a deep voice inside his head.  In the short, rude tone there was a touch of comfort, almost of fondness.  **_You’re not alone anymore, Eddie.  We’re together now.  I am your pack.  I am your family._**


	6. pack

The first thing that reached Eddie’s ears was the sound of water. Not the imperious noise of wild running water, but the rhythmic drips of a leak that fell over and over again, untiring, repeating and magnified into infinity by the curved walls of the cave. Eddie licked his lips and tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry and his lips were chapped, his throat scraped raw. Pain. Desperation. That sound was making him feel so, so thirsty…

A pained gasp emerged from his lips when he tried to move. He opened his eyes, but in the back of the cave there was nothing but darkness. Even with his eyes shut he could feel that he was lying down on the cool floor of the cave, the tiny grains of sand and dirt beneath his head and in the uncovered skin of his neck, cooling him down. The fever seemed to have lowered a bit, but he was still thirsty. Too thirsty.

Suddenly, Eddie felt something moisten his lips—something soft and spongy. He was certain that this was no hallucination; he wasn’t delirious the way he had been the night before. The wetness that touched his lips and mouth was so real, but so scanty that it made him moan in protest.

“More…” he whispered.

And his request was answered. Once again that smooth texture returned to pass over his lips, coming into his mouth and wetting it. A tiny amount of water, almost a drop, but enough to get his saliva working and allow him to pass some liquid through his dried-out throat. Accompanying the water Eddie also felt something like a tiny caress, a hand sliding across his forehead, fingers combing through his hair.

Eddie opened his eyes, but he wasn’t able to see anything in all that darkness. But he could feel it, a calming presence there next to him, something that emanated a sensation of safety. The same presence that had calmed him down enough to close his eyes and sleep the previous night. 

**_You aren’t alone anymore, Eddie_** , that voice had said, deep and rough and mechanical, empty of all human qualities, but at the same time so full of meaning, as if it were filled with unconditional love. **_We are together now_**.

Suddenly, Eddie remembered everything in a single blow. The murder, the monster, the infection, the fever, the hallucinations. He opened his eyes as wide as saucers and got up, startled. He put a hand to his chest, sensing, listening, seeking anything foreign, anything out of place that would give him a clue as to whether he had been infected.

Why had his fever, such a powerful one, broken so quickly? What had given him that water to drink? Was it the monster? He turned his head in every direction, looking for it, but he didn’t find anything, no signal that indicated to him that there was anything in that cave aside from himself.

“Where…? Who…?”

**_Be calm, Eddie. Rest_**. It was a whisper, like the ones before. The whisper of a deep voice that Eddie didn’t hear with his ears but rather sensed directly inside his head.

He looked outside, where the colour of the sky was shifting from the dark blue of the deep night into an intense purple; dawn was close. Now his eyes had gotten accustomed to the darkness in the cave, and he was able to distinguish between the different densities of shadow, to make out the elongated silhouettes of the stalactites in the roof, the rocks that cut across the cave, the great bulk of the Interceptor—but no other human being in his field of vision.

At that moment he confirmed what he had been fearing all this time.

“Oh, God,” he muttered, raising both hands to his temples and striking them. “I’m infected. I’ve been infected.”

**_Not infected, Eddie. We have united._ **

Eddie jumped, looking right and left, looking for something, someone, whatever it might be. But he knew beforehand that he wouldn’t find anything there. There was no one but him in that cave. Him alone, with that monster that lived inside of him, in his head. He let himself fall to his knees on the floor, shouting, his hands squeezing his head with brutal force. He was on the floor, but he felt as if he were falling, the monster running free inside him, in his veins.

“United?” Eddie asked mechanically, before letting out a furious shout. “United how?! You’re living in my body, you goddamn alien monster. This is what you call a union?!” 

Eddie jumped to his feet, feeling his legs trembling.  His knees faltered for a moment, but he made himself stay on his feet. Desperate, he started taking off his clothes, trying to find any physical evidence of the monster that was now living inside of his body. He took off his jacket, tore at his shirt, and threw his gloves to the floor, his kerchief and goggles, until his torso was left bare. He inspected his hands, forearms, ribs, chest, and abdomen, but he wasn’t able to find anything unusual about his body. There were the tattoos that he’d had done with his pack, the markings of belonging to a den; muscles, like always, which he knew well, throbbing with anger; ribs a little thinner due to hunger and fever; but nothing that would make him think that he was an infected person now. 

The only strange thing was the scent of his body, a little sharper and sweeter. He smelled his underarms and his neck only to discover that his scent seemed to have changed. He couldn’t perceive that tenuous, diminished scent of a defeated Alpha anymore; it was more like a scent that had been growing little by little, more subtle, but more pervasive—what it really resembled was the scent of an Omega.

“It can’t be,” he breathed, smelling every part of himself that he could. “Who are you? What have you done to me? Show yourself!”

Before Eddie’s astonished face, a blackish substance burst out from the pores of his skin, like a thick, dark sweat, viscous, that spilled out of his shoulder. That formless mass began to unify itself, acquiring weight and consistency, forming a single head with an enormous mouth full of lethal sharp fangs with visible gums; shining gem-like eyes, without pupils or irises, that grew towards the neck, and with a long slimy tongue full of minuscule spiny protuberances.

“Oh God…!” Eddie flinched, smashing his back against the hard rock, trying to get away from the monster, but it was no use. The monster was adhered to him, looking him right in the eyes, unperturbed. “What the hell are you?”

**_I am Venom._ **

Eddie had never seen a creature like that: grotesque, horrifying, repulsive. A string of thick, transparent saliva ran down its open jaws, its enormous retractable tongue moving from one side to the other like a snake advancing between the dunes. It was the first time Eddie had seen one of those monsters show its true form outside the body of its host. A shiver ran down him from head to toe, and he had to close his eyes and gasp in dismay, hugging himself.

**_Eddie still has a fever. Still thirsty._ **

Eddie opened his eyes to find the creature looking him in the face, with its head slightly cocked, as if it were paying attention to something extrasensory. Its body moved over itself, as if it were convulsing a little, until a long thin tentacle the size of a finger had reached far away enough to grab the little drops of water that were accumulating at the tips of the stalactites hanging from the ceiling.

**_Drink, Eddie_**.

He couldn’t do anything but obey. Trembling from head to toe, Eddie opened his mouth a little more and let one of that creature’s tentacles enter his mouth and moisten it. He couldn’t deny that it felt wonderful and disturbing at the same time—that a creature as monstrous as this one was able to demonstrate such delicacy, such devotion.

“This thirst…” Eddie said, interrupting the movement of that tentacle, which rose toward the ceiling to seek water and returned to drip it between Eddie’s lips. “This sudden fever and this thirst, they’re because of the infection, right?” The creature’s silence was all the confirmation Eddie needed.

For the first time since he opened his eyes, Eddie relaxed completely. He got as comfortable as he could against the wall, the cold rock cradling him in a smooth curve, letting out a sigh and half-closing his eyes.

He felt strangely calm, at peace. And it wasn’t due only to his physical thirst being quenched—it was something else, something warm that he could sense inside his chest, growing. Maybe it had something to do with the scent that had suddenly inundated the dense air inside the cave. Eddie couldn’t perceive the smell of the rock and wet earth anymore, because his senses had been dulled by an unknown scent—strong, like coffee; like a tobacco leaf toasted in the sun. And that scent was like a lullaby, calming him down and making him feel safe. It was the scent of an Alpha.

“Just a second!” Eddie yelled, jumping up suddenly. “What does this mean? Why does this Alpha scent seem so nice? And why do I have this scent…this Omega scent?”

The creature cocked its head again, this time to the other side. The shine of its enormous eyes, like crystal balls, seemed to indicate curiosity. It didn’t answer him, and Eddie snorted, getting comfortable against the wall again, resigned. He suspected that Venom didn’t have any idea about what he was asking. After all, as far as Eddie knew, all the stories they told about those monsters who had fallen from the sky said that they were soulless beings without understanding, who acted only by the primary instinct to devour and destroy everything in their path.

However, he eventually realized that this information didn’t make sense, not completely. If those monsters were pure devourers who took over your body to have a host that would permit them to raze the world, why did he feel so normal now, so conscious and in control? And why had the creature limited itself to speaking in a civilized way at Eddie’s side? Maybe the stories they told were not so true after all…

Eddie stopped asking himself if there were some way to expel the monster from his body without killing himself in the process, because it was clear that a suicide mission would not work. He had already realized that Venom was the one who had saved him during the storm, so there was no reason to try something like that again.

“What happened during the storm?” Eddie asked. He stayed lying against the cave wall, with his gaze fixed on the pale blue sky of dawn. “Did you save me?”

**_I saved us._ **

“What? Why?”

**_We protect one another, Eddie. We are a pack_**. The creature’s voice was hoarse, but warm, calming, like a cat’s purr that Eddie could feel vibrating in his chest. **_When Eddie passed out because of the storm, we took control of the body, got in the car, and got us away from that place_**.

“Okay…okay. I want you to listen to me very carefully, Venom.” Eddie turned from the entrance to the cave to stare right at the creature. It was the first time he had looked the creature directly in the eyes, and for an instant he felt lost, hypnotized by those shining iridescent eyes. “You are never going to take control of my body against my will again. Understood?”

**_If Eddie is in danger, I should save him._ **

“Okay. You’ll never take control of my body without my consent unless I’m in danger.” 

The creature accepted, nodding. A gesture so human that it made him tremble…

“How do you know my name, anyway?”

_**I know everything about you, Eddie. My Eddie.** _

“What’s this about ‘My Eddie’?!” he said, enraged.

**_Eddie is mine and I am Eddie’s_** , the creature said without a trace of doubt. **_We were alone, without a pack, without a family, weak and bondless_**. Eddie watched, concerned, as the substance that made up the creature’s body spread over his naked skin, circling his shoulders like an embrace, covering his back and enclosing itself in his chest, sheltering him with its smooth touch, wet and surprisingly warm. **_But now we will not be alone ever again, Eddie. We have met at last. We will be our pack._**

Eddie didn’t know when his voice had started shaking, nor when that lump had formed in his throat that kept him from breathing freely. He was only aware that he was crying when he felt a tear roll down his cheek. 

**_Don’t be sad, Eddie. We’re together now._ **

Eddie, who had been alone for so long, broken, felt shaky hearing those words, so human, coming from that monstrous creature. He had to clear his throat several times before he could regain his composure.

“Tell me something, Venom.”

**_What do you want to know, my Eddie?_ **

“You all, the monsters…”

**_Symbiotes, Eddie. We are symbiotes._ **

“Okay, Venom. You symbiotes, can you survive without a host?”

**_Not in this atmosphere. We need a living being, adapted to the conditions of this planet, to be able to survive in it ourselves._ **

“Then how did you survive for so long in that warehouse?”

**_We were locked in a capsule made on my birth planet, that maintained the same conditions as Klyntar_** , he explained. Eddie was astonished. He still couldn’t believe that he was having a conversation with one of those monsters, and that it was telling him about its origins and weaknesses. **_Sealed up. Prisoners. Outcasts. Locked up by members of our own species. Traitor, they called us._**

“Why did they lock you up?” Eddie didn’t know when it had happened, but he was genuinely interested, almost worried.

**_For having different ideas than the other symbiotes_** , Venom said. His voice was still mechanical, but Eddie could perceive something different, a vibration in his chest that told him it was hurting the creature to remember. **_We were exiled from the rest of the symbiotes. They saw weakness in us, but they forgot the original ideals of the symbiotes from the beginning. We were destined to protect the cosmos, not destroy it. Riot, the corrupt one, manipulated my siblings into seeking destruction._**

“How long were you locked up in there?”

**_Years, Eddie. Many years. Too many years. We had started to think that you would never come._ **

“Me?” Eddie asked, surprised. It had been a while since he had been able to look away from Venom’s eyes, attracted to him by an inexplicable magnetic force. “Why were you expecting me to go to that place?”

**_Destined, Eddie. One of the earth and one of the stars, made to be together._ **

Eddie kept looking at Venom, astonished, not knowing what to think. It was then that Venom separated part of his body and made it into a left arm, in the image and semblance of a human one. He raised it in Eddie’s direction, with an open palm and fingers extended upward. Eddie imitated him without thinking twice and interlaced his fingers with Venom’s, uniting them in a firm grip. He looked up, only to discover that the symbiote had been staring fixedly at him the whole time, just as he had been ever since they saw each other in that old warehouse.

Eddie closed his eyes and let out a long breath. Merely the contact with Venom’s skin had generated an electric current that ran up his back, making every hair on his body stand up. And he became aware once again of that scent, thick but calming: it was the scent of an Alpha strong enough to make him feel, for the first time, at home.


	7. destined

When Eddie woke up the next morning, it was getting close to midday, and his fever had broken. His body had resisted its new occupant, but it had gotten used to him and survived. He straightened up little by little, feeling how much his muscles trembled from the overexertion of trying to get to his feet. He hadn’t eaten in days and he was still very weak from the fever, but his mind was completely clear and he thought hunger was a good sign.

Venom was still attached to his body, as if he were wearing a black fitted shirt that moulded to his torso like a second skin. Eddie looked at his forearms, turning them from side to side, impressed. The smooth, damp texture of the symbiote against his skin kept him at the perfect temperature, warm without being too hot, cool without being frozen, and it gave Eddie a feeling of safety that he had never experienced before.

A strange idea crossed his mind then, that the feeling was very similar to being in the still safety of the maternal womb, the same warmth, the same unconditional love…

In any case, that particular pervasive scent of a powerful Alpha was still lingering. It was so strong that Eddie really could have said that even more than smelling of Alpha, he reeked of it. Although he had to acknowledge, to his chagrin, that it wasn’t an unpleasant scent—just an intense, masculine one that seemed to calm him down more that even the best sedative. He was sure that this scent, and having it attached to his body, was what had allowed him to sleep for more that 24 hours in a row.

But things couldn’t go on like this. Eddie knew that they were courting danger; at any time they could be attacked by the desert scavengers.

He approached his car and inspected it from all around, circling it with the slow pace of a convalescing patient. The Interceptor seemed the same as it had been two days before, parked in the middle of the cave. Eddie approached the entrance. The sand held no clues of footsteps other than his own, so he was able to assure himself that he was alone.

He crawled to the mouth of the cave, quickly hiding himself behind a fallen rock to inspect the canyon. A little deeper into it those parapets started to form, but he didn’t see any sign of life for hundreds of metres around. He got to his feet and limped back inside with a hand on his ribs. The fever had broken, but he felt as though he had been beaten.

“Hey, buddy, you there?” he asked, passing the palm of his hand over his chest—over the dark substance that was Venom’s body—in what was almost a caress.

**_Yes, Eddie,_** rumbled the symbiote’s voice immediately in Eddie’s head, thick and grim, but calming. **_Always_**.

“We should get out of here, soon.” He peeked through the window of the Interceptor into the interior, confirming that everything was in its place. In passing, he gave a little smack to the fuel gauge, hoping for a miracle, but the needle didn’t move. “It’s not safe for us to be here,” he said, standing up.

**_Eddie needs water. Dehydrated. And we need to eat._ **

Eddie let out a shout of laughter. He sat down on the hood of the car and shook his head, still laughing. He had to hold his ribs with both hands, because his abdomen hurt with every cackle. 

“Eat? And what exactly do you propose that I give you to eat? People?”

**_We just like the heads, Eddie._ **

“Don’t fuck with me! I’m not going to give you a damn human being so you can gorge yourself on a silver platter.”

**_If you don’t feed me, your liver is going to start looking like a very appetizing substitute_**. The thick tone of the symbiote’s voice had a touch of amusement. Eddie was surprised to discover that those monsters also had a sense of humour; he never expected to find so many similarities between them, to identify with him so much. **_Mmmmm…juicy, delicious._**

“Disgusting monster.” Eddie let out a low grunt and walked at a slow pace, dragging his feet, toward the back of the cave. He bent with a moan to grab the clothes that he had thrown to the floor the day before, and it was there that he noticed the small passage hidden inside a rock, nothing more that a tunnel that a person could enter only on hands and knees. 

Eddie got closer and knelt in front of it, inspecting it. Between the rock that blocked off the tunnel and its entrance, there was an empty space, very thin, but he calculated that he could maybe sneak through if he went sideways. The interior of the passage was damp, and cooler than the rest of the cave, creating a smooth current of cold air which indicated that the tunnel probably opened onto a new cave, or maybe even a passage to the exterior.

Eddie spent a couple seconds debating whether to sneak out to explore the tunnel or leave as soon as possible, until Venom’s voice resounded strong and clear in his head.

**_Go in, Eddie. Water._ **

And Eddie thought about it. Just the promise of finding water at the end of the path would be good enough to make him crawl on hands and knees through the long, thin passage cut into pure rock. But he also wanted to confirm if what the symbiote had said was pure nonsense, or if it had to do with some type of understanding about the environment that was different from what Eddie had as a human. So he did it. 

He crawled forward, completely in the dark, feeling the painful contact of the rock with his knees and elbows, the thick smell of rot and the growing dampness soaking his clothes. It was a passage that had clearly been made by human hands—it was not natural. The walls had the marks of having been sculpted by some type of tool. The passage got a little wider as Eddie went on. It took a turn to the right and then ascended in a smooth curve until it opened on the wide, luminous mouth of a deeper cave.

The new cave was broad, almost four times bigger than the one in which Eddie had slept all those days, and much much taller. The ceiling was naturally vaulted, but they had excavated hundreds of small holes in the mother rock that let soft natural light filter into the cave from the surface. Right in the middle, there was a well of natural water so large and deep that it made Eddie’s mouth water just to look at it. 

He ran toward the water and let himself fall to his knees on the floor to stick his head into the pond. The water was fresh, and it seemed to him to even have a touch of mild sweetness. He swallowed it knowing with every sip that never in his life had he tasted anything similar. He drank until he ran out of air, and after heaving several frantic breaths, he kept drinking until he was satisfied.

Only once he brought his head out of the water for a third time did Eddie notice the resplendent greenery that grew on the interior walls, including moss that clung to every rock. Eddie had never seen such green in his life.

He understood how the desert scavengers had survived all that time in this dried-up canyon full of rocks and sand, and why they never had to leave it in search of water or food: they had everything they needed right here. The subterranean water was able to support growing life in the deep places of a dead earth, creating a true hidden paradise. There must have been hundreds of these caves, dispensaries for food and water distributed throughout the canyon. 

If the rest of the packs found out, they would unleash war, one even bloodier than the one that had destroyed the planet.

Eddie got to his feet and walked toward the closest green patch. They were cultivated plants, he immediately noted, because they had been planted inside of long wooden boxes, filled with good dark soil that someone had dampened. From out of these boxes grew plants that Eddie had never even imagined could exist. He stretched out his hand to touch them.

The first thing he noticed was the rough, firm texture of the leaves. Then he sniffed them until finally he dared to take a bite. The flavour was dull and strange, but not unpleasant, and the crunchy fresh texture flooded his mouth with saliva. Once he swallowed, he couldn’t stop himself until he had tried everything that was available inside the cave and had satiated his stomach. His favourite was a round fruit, red and soft, with an intense aroma that exploded in his mouth with every bite. When he was finally finished, his chin, neck, hands, and forearms were soaked with juice from the fruit.

He cocked his head, and a new potential use for the pond came to his mind.

Eddie raised a leg to take off one of his boots and then switched his weight to the other leg to take off the other with a brusque tug. He unbuckled his greasy brown leather pants and let them slide down his legs until they fell heavily to the floor, raising a little cloud of dust. Last, he took off his boxers. Venom had reabsorbed himself into the interior of Eddie’s body and now there was no sign of him, so Eddie was completely naked.

Eddie’s body was imposing, bulky, the body of a powerful Alpha, with strong bones covered by broad and powerful muscles. His arms, chest, and back were covered all over with tattoos, marks of the pack that at one time he had belonged to: marks of belonging, of fealty and honour. At one time in his life they had meant so much; too much. Now they were just a lot of pictures on his skin without any value at all.

His thighs were covered all over with short golden hair that covered all the powerful muscles of his legs and ascended, like a path, becoming thicker at his groin, forming a small triangle of denser, darker hair around his dick. Under the filtered light falling from the holes in the rock, Eddie’s body seemed resplendent, reflecting warm golden tones.

He dropped into the pond with a single jump. Eddie had never in his life had the opportunity to see so much clean water, much less bathe in it. He submerged himself completely, trying to hold his breath as long as he could despite his lungs protesting, until he surfaced with a sigh of satisfaction in less than a minute.

Eddie rested his back against the lip of the pond and closed his eyes. After a moment of relaxing, he felt Venom coming out of his body and taking his natural form, as he had done the previous morning.

Eddie hadn’t opened his eyes, but he could feel the piercing intensity of Venom’s glowing eyes inspecting him. On the tip of his nose, he felt a small touch from Venom’s wet skin, giving him goosebumps. Eddie almost laughed. 

And suddenly he felt something rough and wet crawling up the skin of his throat. He opened his eyes, startled, and found Venom’s tongue licking his jaw. Eddie jumped, concerned about the symbiote’s surprising gesture, but more surprised still by the electric sensation that came over him like a bolt of lightning. It was a current that ran down his back and planted itself deep between his legs, making him hard. Eddie looked down, surprised to find his dick standing up beneath the crystalline water like an answer, until he realized that Venom was licking the remains of the fruit that was still on Eddie’s chin. He gave Venom a hard stare and submerged himself again to wash his neck.

Maybe Venom was startled by that sudden dip, because he absorbed himself back into Eddie’s body instantly.

**_What’s up, Eddie?_** Venom said inside his head. To Eddie, it seemed like there was a touch of rebuke in his tone of voice. Had Venom understood what he had provoked with that gesture of his? Was he capable of understanding it? **_Something bothering you?_**

Eddie lifted his head from under the water and shook it, flinging little crystalline droplets here and there. 

“Is it always going to be like this? Are you always going to be whispering in my head?” 

**_I’m in your head. I can know every single one of your thoughts and speak to you through them, Eddie._ **

Eddie rested his back against the walls of the pond again, securing himself with both arms extended to the side, and he relaxed the rest of his body. A strange, calming sensation had invaded his limbs, like the strenuous exhaustion after a jolt of adrenaline. He allowed the moment to linger, letting himself be pulled into the stillness, and little by little, a single thought took over the entirety of his mind: Venom, and the connection that Eddie had felt with him since the first time he saw him imprisoned in that capsule.

“I heard your voice in my mind, much earlier than when you joined yourself to me,” he said eventually, in a low and neutral voice. “Is that possible?”

Venom came back out of his body, materializing himself out of one shoulder to keep looking Eddie directly in the eyes. Eddie knew that what Venom was just about to reveal to him was so important that it merited being said with eye contact, so Eddie met the gaze of those great elongated eyes, and felt pierced by them.

**_Only in very rare cases,_** Venom explained. **_It’s not anything common, more like…. You humans would say that it’s a good sign, to assure us that we’ve found a suitable host. Your other._**

“Are you talking about twin souls? Soulmates?”

**_On my planet, some believe that an ideal host exists for every symbiote._ **

“That’s impossible,” Eddie whispered, his voice thready.

**_I thought it was a legend, too, until I met you, Eddie._**

Although he had only known the symbiote a short time, Eddie had learned to recognize the subtle differences in the hard, thick tone of his voice, maybe due to the fact that they were sharing the same body, and every one of Venom’s words implicated the corresponding sensory response in Eddie’s muscles—but Eddie knew that Venom was telling him the truth. He had no idea if that story about destiny was true or not, but he did know that Venom firmly believed in it. 

Moreover, there was the mystery of Eddie’s scent. Now that he was submerged in the pond, Eddie was more conscious than ever of the fact that his scent was changing: slowly, gently, but irrevocably it was leaving behind that heavy, bitter Alpha scent to be replaced with a fresher, lighter scent of citrus and cinnamon.

He passed both hands through his hair, over the back of his neck and his throat, above the glands in the sides of his throat, where the most intense scent and the natural pheromones that left his body were concentrated, and then he scented his hands. It was undeniable. He smelled of Omega.

“This!” he said, extending his hands toward Venom, as if to insist that Venom scent him as well. “What is with this? Why this scent? I know you know!”

Venom snorted, exhaling strongly through the nose. It wasn’t necessary for Eddie to bring his hand any closer to Venom’s face to enable Venom to perceive the scent—he smelled it perfectly, all the time. He was already stunned by Eddie, and the scent was almost imperceptible. He didn’t want to even imagine what he would sense when his rut returned.

“Fucking answer me!” Eddie yelled, hitting the surface of the water, which splashed Venom in the face. But the symbiote didn’t even flinch.

**_Your body is changing, Eddie, adapting itself,_** Venom answered calmly.

“Adapting to what?”

**_To us._**

“And what the hell does that have to do with why I smell like this?!” Eddie smacked his chest with the palm of his hand, his chest reddening little by little because of the force. “Am I an Omega now?” 

**_We are complements, Eddie. Complete opposites. Rare even on Klyntar. One of the stars and the other of the earth, one Alpha and the other Omega_**.

Venom’s eyes had stretched themselves out, elongating. Under that light and with the intensity of his gaze, his eyes had acquired a particular shine: they were iridescent, shimmering, unique and precious. Eddie, staring at him fixedly, felt the sudden desire to caress him, but he kept squeezing his hands into fists with all the strength he had left.

“All this—it’s a bad joke,” he said through his teeth. The muscles of his tense jaw began to jump with the force. “I can’t be turning into an Omega.”

**_Why not?_ **

“Because they’re fucking weak, asshole!” he yelled, frustrated. “Everyone hunts them because everyone is stronger than them. They’re weak, infirm and sickly. And they’re on the brink of extinction!”

**_Like Anne and Esperanza?_** Venom asked in an atonal voice, a voice that revealed absolutely nothing.

Eddie went stone still, frozen in place. He let his hands fall to the sides of his body like dead weight. He didn’t attempt to respond. He could only look at Venom with a grimace of pain and surprise, his mouth slightly open.

Venom didn’t say anything else. He sensed through their bond the pain his host had suffered upon hearing those names. He felt it as a very real hurt, so real that it was like a sharp, cold knife going through his chest. It wasn’t doing him any good to look at Eddie. The water that came up to Eddie’s waist was very still and now functioned as a mirror, reflecting the upper half of his body in the fine shafts of light filtering down from the roof of the cave, playing over his wet hair, setting off golden tones; and his chin, the back of his neck, and his throat dripping with fine droplets of water. His hard, masculine beauty was bewitching. Venom couldn’t have stopped looking at him from inside, even if he had wanted to.

“What the hell do you know about them?!” Eddie asked hoarsely, with a voice so guttural and cold that Venom was impressed. He looked at Eddie, saw the tears welling up in his eyes, his reddened pupils, his bottom lip trembling—but he wasn’t able to understand Eddie’s pain completely. “Don’t you dare speak their names again!”

**_They are on your mind, Eddie, always_** , he answered. **_They make Eddie sad_**.

Eddie let out a series of restrained gasps, each time breathing with more difficulty. It seemed as though he was going to begin crying at any moment—he was on the verge of crumbling—but he didn’t. He closed his eyes and calmed his breathing. He inhaled deeply and his nostrils filled with that tranquilizing scent of tobacco and coffee, the serenity running through his body like a drug, relaxing him, calming him down. The sensation that was becoming more familiar each time: the feeling of being protected, of being intensely and unconditionally loved.

Eddie opened his eyes again and met Venom’s gaze straight on, Venom’s great round eyes like silvery gems, shining, showing him his own reflection.

“They were my pack, before. Many years ago,” he said with a steady, lifeless voice; he was opening himself up to another living being for the first time since Anne’s death. “When I was still a real Alpha, I had them. My family.”

**_What happened to them, Eddie?_**

“They died. Murdered.” His voice was hoarse, atonal, but Eddie realized suddenly that he didn’t feel that lacerating pain growing inside of him; now he felt calm, at peace. “It was my fault. It was my fault, that’s why I’m cursed now.” He looked at Venom, and in Eddie’s blue eyes a furious grey-blue storm was brewing.

“Now I’m one of the living dead. Condemned to flee. Hunted by scavengers and packs. Haunted by the ones I couldn’t protect. That’s how I exist in this fucking wasteland. A man reduced to nothing but instinct: survival. Revenge. Death.

“My only goal is to survive long enough to get revenge.”


	8. the desert scavengers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: This chapter contains threats of sexual violence and vivid descriptions of Venom eating people. I'm happy to answer questions or provide further details if anyone needs them. Please read (or skip this chapter!) with your self-care in mind. <3

Eddie didn’t have to leave the cave to see them. He could sense their presence the moment they drew near, circling him like a band of vultures claiming their prey. Afraid at first, cautious, approaching with careful steps so as not to be heard—but that didn’t make any sense. Their noxious Alpha scent was so dense and concentrated that it instantly made Eddie wrinkle his nose.

In the Three Packs’ territory, they were known as desert scavengers. It was said that they were savage, senseless people who lived without rules or bonds or family—that the radiation had broken their minds and that they fed on other human beings, those poor ill-fated people who fell into their grasp. Eddie knew now that none of that was true. He had seen their underground gardens for himself, and he knew that they were desert _farmers_ more than scavengers. This, however, did not make them less dangerous.

They were a formidable coalition of young Alphas exiled from the Three Packs’ territory, who had come together through some primitive common instinct to survive by forming a group. But it wasn’t a true pack. Omegas were the nucleus of a pack. Alphas came and went, new leaders rose and took control by force all the time—it was the Omegas who persisted for generations, who birthed and raised the pups, who created bonds and formed families.

No, the desert scavengers were nothing more than a coalition of exiled Alphas.

Eddie walked slowly toward the entrance of the cave to face them. They didn’t scare him. There were close to fifty in the group, equal parts men and women but all of them Alphas beyond a shadow of a doubt. They wore brown clothes to camouflage themselves in the desert, which was why people said that they surged out from the sand itself as a living expression of the murderous desert’s fury. 

They had on long jackets, knee-length, with thick pants and tall boots with enormous spikes. They protected their hands with fingerless leather gloves that gave them the best manoeuvrability when handling a gun, their heads covered in dark frayed rags and their eyes hidden behind smoked lenses that protected them from radiation. They wore masks which took on extravagant shapes, connected to mobile oxygen tanks that gave them a bonus in battle like gas in a car's tank. They decorated themselves using logos and licence plates from old cars. 

Eddie looked them up and down. All of them had hung a license plate from a belt, each one of them with a unique number to identify them. They stared at Eddie, taking his measure. Eddie could feel their eyes running over him as if he were tender meat grilled on an open flame.

He considered the possibility of getting into the Interceptor and passing them from above. The desert scavengers only used motorcycles, which gave them more manoeuvrability and agility when it was time to travel in between the rocky canyons. But the motorcycles also lessened their ability to withstand the impact of crashes. Eddie, for his part, drove a Ford Falcon XB GT with 300 horsepower that could reach speeds of 192 kilometres per hour—on the highway, he was unstoppable. But in this damn canyon, for a change, he would lose manoeuvrability and speed. So he decided against his furious exit plan at the last minute. Maybe he could still achieve a diplomatic escape.

The scavengers were in something like a battle formation, surrounding the entrance to the cave in a semicircle with their machine guns and pistols aimed. Some crouched, sniffing in Eddie’s direction; others were on foot, legs spread and firmly planted on the ground; some perched in the rocky outcroppings, like snipers watching from a distance; others lurked on the smooth slope close to the mouth of the cave.

But what drew Eddie’s attention was the person sitting calmly on a rock, facing him, playing with the muzzle of the machine gun holstered at his ankle and laughing a dry chuckle. That person seemed like the leader, although Eddie knew that the scavengers didn’t organize themselves according to the same logic as the packs. Here in the middle of the desert, everyone was king of their own piece of land wherever they stepped.

Eddie took just a couple steps outside the cave, and within seconds the relentless rays of sunlight had already burnt him. He could feel the radiation hitting him, gnawing through the protection of his jacket, starting at his shoulders.

“Well well well…this really _is_ a surprise! An Omega of fertile age who has happened to fall into our territory,” said the person Eddie took for the leader. He had a licence plate slung across his left arm that read _3FKN California_ , the rest of the letters having been erased by corrosion.

“Can it be that the Mother Highway has seen fit to show mercy to her servants? What sort of miracle is this?” he asked, raising his hands to the sky and looking at his companions. The group laughed in chorus, a sign of approval. “What are you doing here, Omega?”

“Just needed a safe place to spend the night,” Eddie said calmly, raising his hands in the air to show he was unarmed. “I’m getting out of here right now, and you won’t see me again. Let’s do this the easy way, and hopefully none of us will die today.”

“Die?” asked 3FKN California, jumping to his feet. Now the cackling of his companions could be heard like an echo, amplified by the length of the canyon, repeating itself in ghostly sounds. “The only one here who might die is you, Omega. We are many against one. We are Alphas against an Omega. Don’t be stupid! There is no way that you win this battle, or that you manage to flee.

“I’ll offer you a deal,” he said, speaking more quietly. His voice was hoarse and machinelike from behind the breathing mask. “We do this peacefully, and maybe you won’t get hurt…well, not too much…” 

“Seems like an offer I won’t be able to accept,” said Eddie.

“Gotta tear him up, California!” shouted one of the scavengers from behind the leader. But they stopped as soon as the leader raised a hand, absolute silence falling in the canyon.

“If you insist on doing this the hard way, it will only be worse for you,” 3FKN California assured Eddie, taking three slow steps forward. He took off the oxygen mask and goggles so that Eddie could see his face, read the menace in his clouded eyes.

“Here in our coalition we don’t follow any hierarchy. You won’t be just one Alpha’s ball-licker like you’re used to. You’ll have to present your ass to all of us, and we’ll take you until there’s nothing left of you but a scrap of a human being. And when we can’t get any more use out of you at all, we’ll feed you to the vultures.”

“To the vultures!” crowed the rest in chorus. “To the vultures!” 

“Although it could take months before we’re ready to lay you to that ultimate rest…years, even,” said 3FKN California, shooting Eddie a ghoulish smile. He had lost half of his teeth, the remaining ones yellowed, and a horrible scar crossed his left cheek from eyebrow to jaw.

“Depends on how resilient you are. If you’re weak, you’ll die in less than seven days.”

**_That’s never going to happen_** , Venom murmured in his head. Eddie smiled to hear him—he could hear the anger in Venom’s voice and feel his growing rage through the bond. Eddie felt it as a vibration that ran over his skin, giving him goosebumps.

“Stay calm, V.” Eddie put a hand to his own chest, still smiling, an effective way to let the symbiote know that everything was alright, to calm him down because Eddie wasn’t afraid.

He was distracted for a few seconds thinking about how amazing it was to feel so at ease in that moment, and he had no doubt that he owed his confidence to Venom. It seemed ironic, but after the short time that they had been together, their connection had grown to the point where Eddie considered Venom to be an extension of himself, a reflection, _his other_.

**_Gotta kill them all, Eddie,_** said Venom in a voice thick with pure rage. **_Make a mountain out of them_**.

“A mountain?”

**_Yes. A pile of bodies over here, and a pile of heads over there._ **

“Ha. Doesn’t sound like a bad idea.”

**_Yes, Eddie. Good idea_ ** **.**

The scavengers circling Eddie let their guard down for a second, loosened their grip on their machine guns and looked at each other, confused. Did that Omega just hold an entire conversation with himself? Many of them let out howls and mocking laughs. People who hallucinated were nothing strange in the new world, but they were despised and feared by all.

“This one’s crazy, California,” said a scavenger wearing the license plate _XZ 43 75_. “Radiation’s fried his brains. We have to kill him before we catch his craziness.”

“We should hunt him,” argued a scavenger to the right. “Whoever catches him can have him first.”

Eddie turned his face away, watching them from his peripheral vision. They were approaching from all sides, closing the circle, corralling him like a pack of hungry wolves. 

“You smell so good, Omega,” murmured another of the scavengers who was hiding beneath a boulder. They took off their mask and licked their lips shamelessly. Eddie could smell their stirred-up pheromones, all the scavengers’ pheromones. The situation was about to get out of control.

“We have to sort out who’s going to take him first!” shouted a scavenger from farther away. They all had oxygen masks and big goggles, their heads enveloped in dark rags, so that Eddie had trouble reading their expressions. But that wasn’t necessary: their intentions were more than clear.

“Let’s vote!”

“I don’t recommend it, seriously,” Eddie warned them one last time.

The fight began without any warning. The scavengers weren’t going to risk wounding Eddie fatally, so they put down their machine guns just before they attacked—but they didn’t come emptyhanded. Eddie felt the first scavenger’s dagger at his throat, trying to immobilize him. Eddie hit them in the ribcage with his elbow, and all the air in their lungs rushed out in an instant, enabling Eddie to get out from underneath their hold and escape their grasp.

Just then there was another scavenger, who threw themself on top and began punching Eddie in the right cheekbone before Eddie gave them a solid blow directly to the nose, which left them immobilized. Eddie jabbed them with an elbow to the ribs, and in an instant all the breath was thrown from their lungs, enabling him to slide out from underneath and escape their grip.

At that moment there was another scavenger who threw themself on top of Eddie and reached out to make a clean cut on his right cheekbone. But Eddie gave them a blind punch directly to the nose, which knocked them unconscious. 

The air around Eddie was dense, full of the dominant scent of many Alphas fighting to overcome one another. Eddie looked at them sadly: at the end of the day, what they said in the Three Packs’ territory about the desert scavengers was true. They weren’t a true pack, they didn’t have any Omegas among them to create blood ties uniting them, they were not a family, and worst of all they couldn’t form bonds linking themselves together. A strong, primitive objective was all that united them, but they were lacking order, discipline, and leadership. They each acted separately, even starting to fight each other blindly, like animals.

The wind kicked up a cloud of dust and the air filled with groans when a group of three Alphas grabbed each other by the matted hair, fighting with knife in hand, holding the others off so that no one could get close to Eddie except themselves—until 3FKN California discharged his gun into the sky.

“Stop!” he shouted, enraged, spitting saliva as he yelled. “This is the one you should take down!” He pointed emphatically at Eddie.

At his signal, the rest of the scavengers quit fighting amongst themselves and moved in synchrony closer to Eddie, surrounding him on all sides. Eddie turned his head to either side and cracked his knuckles, getting ready to fight. He was smiling, confident, not showing even the tiniest hint of fear.

“Your turn, V.”

The air seemed to eddy around him, rising in spirals up his body, refreshing his heated skin. That strange sensation of adrenaline invaded him again, as if he felt young again, on the top of the world, limitless. He closed his eyes, let his head fall back, and smiled as he felt how all his pores bristled against each other, like a chain reaction. He raised his hands to look at them, and saw that his forearms had been covered by the dark, viscous substance that was Venom’s body, emerging from Eddie’s skin and adhering itself to him.

Eddie felt that he was growing in volume as the curative power of the symbiote regenerated the cut he had over his cheekbone. The dense, bothersome scents of the other Alphas were opaqued by the dominant scent Venom produced. His scent was so pleasant and relaxing to Eddie that he couldn’t help closing his eyes and breathing deeply to enjoy it, whimpering in ecstasy in the process. The same thing that made the other Alphas’ scents repulsive to him made Venom’s scent so attractive. 

When the symbiote’s jaws closed around Eddie's face, covering his eyes, Eddie felt full, powerful, invincible. He saw the world through Venom’s eyes, feeling the breeze through Venom’s skin, smelling the desert through Venom’s nose, and noticing the scavengers’ fear through Venom’s senses. Two souls sharing one skin between them.

Venom roared so loudly that the whole canyon echoed and all the scavengers’ knees shook. His dominance was so powerful that a few plain humans couldn’t withstand it. Most of them stopped with their heads and faces bowed in a sign of mute and instinctive submission.

“The fuck…” 3FKN California muttered, astonished. If he was afraid, he absolutely did not show it. “A monster. An infected person.”

Venom turned to look at him—and thus began the bloodbath.  

The first to fall under his claws was 3FKN California. Venom closed his jaws around 3FKN California’s head and tore it from his body. The thick scarlet blood dripped between Venom’s teeth and fell on his chin when he unleashed another roar. The rest of the scavengers tried to flee in a stampede, but Venom didn’t let them. He hunted them down one by one. 

Some of them he exterminated with a precise bite to the head, killing them instantly, but with others he took his time, taking them to pieces little by little, tearing them limb from limb as if they were fragile dolls made from cloth. Not even the ones who had remained on their motorcycles escaped. Venom reached them in a couple of jumps and hit them like a giant after ants.

There were a few who tried to defend themselves, firing their guns—these were the farthest away, perched in the protruding rocks of the canyon. They were armed with long-distance shotguns and machine guns, into which they had placed their trust. Bullets and shells fell on Venom like a bothersome clattering rain, but they were no more offensive than mosquito bites to Venom. He extended part of his body ahead of him, like a shield that absorbed all the bullets. Some projectiles, the largest of them, he deflected using only his hands, making them explode with the precision of his monstrous fingers. 

For Eddie, all of this seemed unreal. He knew it was happening, but it was impossible for him to feel even a little empathy for members of his species when he was bonded to Venom in this form. He was under the influence of a fever of power. He could hear the crunching of the symbiote’s jaws chewing bones, could feel the thick, acrid, metallic blood sliding down his throat, could smell the butchery directly above his nose, and the fear...he had never been anywhere that stank so much of fear. 

When Venom had finished killing them all and reabsorbed himself into Eddie’s body, for the first time Eddie felt the death of all those human beings as something real, as something he himself had done. He looked behind himself and saw mountains of dismembered corpses, tasted blood and raw human flesh on his tongue, realized that his hands were covered in accusatory scarlet liquid.

Maybe he had lost his mind, but Eddie just clenched his fists and felt the viscosity of the blood running between his fingers, falling onto that damned burning sand, being absorbed instantly. After twelve years chewing on the desire for revenge between his clenched teeth, his moment had arrived.

“So…you like the heads?” Eddie asked. A crooked smile danced on his bloody lips.

**_Yes, Eddie. Human brains, a delicacy._ **

“Okay. I’ll make you a deal, Venom: you help me with your strength, and I’ll give you a feast—a banquet of heads.”


	9. the three packs

Eddie was driving the Interceptor at maximum speed along the Mother Highway—although the deceptive distances of the desert created the illusion that the car had just barely begun to move. The landscape in front of Eddie was always dominated by brown with slight touches of orange, the infinite sand and even the sky coloured ochre, as if the entire world had begun to rust.

Eddie looked forward, to the horizon, to the destiny that glimmered in the distance, toward which he had always directed himself and toward which he was driving right now, heading straight for it without letting up on the gas pedal.   

He took his gaze off the highway for a moment, forgetting his objective, and noticed the flickering red light that showed his radio had turned on, even though he couldn’t hear it—not even the static of a faulty signal. The volume must have been set to zero. 

Everything seemed so silent to Eddie all of a sudden, so empty, and he recognized that this oppressive, almost anguished feeling lodged in his chest was due to Venom’s stillness.   Eddie put a hand over his heart, with the vague intention of feeling the cool smoothness of the symbiote under the skin of his fingers. But he found that Venom had lodged deep inside his body, and Eddie couldn’t find his signal.

Eddie wondered if Venom could be sleeping—or something like that—to replenish his strength. Eddie knew that Venom had been watching over him the entire time he had been weak and feverish in that cave, and afterwards he had fought off fifty scavengers. It was natural that he would need a breather.

“You just rest, buddy. I’ll watch your back.” 

Thanks to the desert scavengers, Eddie had been able to restock his provisions with everything he needed. He had filled the Interceptor’s tanks to the top, replenished his water supply, and took enough fresh food to last him at least a month. He had everything he needed to travel the road for months. He had even been able to glean from the scavengers’ underground gardens. He hadn’t completely exterminated them all, he knew it well, but none of them was about to intrude in his path now that they knew about Venom’s power.

Nevertheless, Eddie had his priorities very clear. He knew perfectly that the only thing that had been keeping him alive these twelve years was the desire for revenge—that was the fuel in his tank—and now he had the possibility of achieving it. He wasn’t going to waste it.

He floored the gas pedal, took the wheel firmly in hand, and headed toward his destiny. For him it was going to be vengeance or death—no other option.

He was leaving behind the last foothills of the mountainous canyon that served as a refuge for the desert scavengers, heading down to the wide plain that was the the Three Packs’ territory. It was a bare, dry plateau, hundreds of kilometres in which there was nothing but pure, hard desert and the only hope of survival was in joining one of the three great packs. No one even dared to question their dominion, much less invade their borders.

The Three Packs had emerged many years earlier, even before Eddie was born, and they constituted the primary form of organization and jurisdiction in society after the Great War had done away with everything. Eddie had been born in the bosom of one of the Three Packs, and so had Anne. They had grown up together in the same den until the day that they decided to exile themselves and became fugitives.

Eddie deviated some hundreds of metres off the road and stationed himself in one of the last natural lookouts that was left before heading down into the monotonous flat terrain of the plain. He turned off the car and used his binoculars to study his objective.

On the horizon, wavering due to the cloud of abrasive heat rising from the sand, the Three Packs rose imposing in the distance. Three large fortifications constantly in confrontation, on guard, and mistrustful of each other, but united by an alliance that made them siblings.

This confederation was a new affair, something from the past twenty years or less, when three colluding Alphas had ascended to power almost simultaneously. Their ascent to power hadn’t been in any way peaceful or natural. It had been a violent, bloody uprising that put them at the forefront of the greatest change to the social structure that anyone had seen in the world since the monsters had arrived: the first alliance. After having secured their internal perimeter, the three leaders embarked on the violent mission of increasing their territory and exterminating any possible threat from the outside.

They were placed over three accidents of nature that made them impassable. Within the protection of each one of these arose the packs that had given lodging to the majority of the human population in the New World, who had given protection and safety to the few surviving Omegas, and who had upheld the ancient traditions of the blood ties within a pack. These three fortifications were called the Bullet Farm, Gasoline City, and Watertown.

Eddie had grown up in Watertown. He could recall perfectly how it was to scamper around in the deep tunnels carved into the mother rock, to feel the infinite silence of the centre of the earth, and the freshness that was almost-unimaginable in the midst of the abrasive world they lived in now. Although he still had the tattoos across his back and on his arms that visibly marked him as belonging to the pack, he missed the warmth of sleeping surrounded by his siblings, the feeling of safety from knowing that there was a pack supporting him, the songs that the pups sang together alongside the Alpha leader—songs of glory, of honour, and of fighting.

Watertown was placed within three hundred-metre-high rocky promontories connected by hanging bridges. It had direct access to an enormous reservoir of clean water that welled up from the deepest parts of the earth, which gave the city its name. They brought out the water using bombs, and with it they could even afford to cultivate vegetables and small trees, and of course trade with the other two cities. The dens had been excavated from the summit of the promontory, so that the only way to ascend was on a mechanical platform that could lift three enormous war rigs at one time.

Eddie knew Watertown’s strengths and weaknesses all too well. He would have been able to crash that party without a problem if he were able to outwit the nighttime Sentinels, slipping through the cracks in the rock toward the very heart of the pack. But it wasn’t Watertown toward which he drove. Eddie knew very well the Alpha who had been Watertown’s leader when he and Anne had escaped; he also knew the Alpha who had replaced that one after his death, because they had grown up together, and neither of the two of them was the Red Alpha whom Eddie was seeking.

Gasoline City was an enormous structure built just outside a refinery abandoned since the time of the Great War. The city was protected by a solid wall of scrap metal and surrounded by a deep trench of petrol, ready to turn itself into a burning inferno as soon as the monsters attacked. Its hundreds of glowing pipes could be seen for kilometres, shining against the clear sky, always lit whether it be day or night.

Eddie knew the leader of Gasoline City, because he had met them a couple of times during his very minimal trading dead-ends. He had also had the audacity to sit himself down in the city’s bar, to present his respects before the leader and raise his cup in a toast for the Three Packs, so that he would no longer be exiled from their territory. Gasoline City’s leader also could not be the Alpha Eddie was looking for.

His only option was the Bullet Farm. The Red Alpha must be there.

Not a day passed when Eddie failed to remember him, as if his image had been recorded in flames on Eddie’s retinas. Every tiny detail that made him distinctive: the skin that the desert sun had sprayed with tanned freckles; the crazy expression on his reddened face; his musculature and stature atop the promontory; the undulating, indomitable hair red as fire, red as the spilled blood of Eddie’s daughter.

Eddie had a plan in mind—nothing elaborate, but it was something. He still had not accepted all the ways that his body was changing, besides noticing each day that his scent was becoming sweeter, more obtrusive, because each day that passed he was becoming more Omega. But he did not intend to ask himself to analyze it, because he knew he was running the risk of losing the little sanity that was left to him. Be that as it may, he intended to use the change in his favour.

The packs coveted and protected their Omegas as if they were the greatest treasure that they possessed, even more precious than food or water. The Omegas lived in secured vaults at the centre of the fortification, to which only the Alpha leader of the pack and their protectors could ascend. The Three Packs got involved in actual battles in order to possess Omegas and to increase their number, and Eddie knew that was where his advantage came into play. If everything went as he was hoping, just detecting his scent would have them opening the doors of the fort one by one.

Eddie knew that if he succeeded, there probably would not be a second chance for him. If he managed to destroy the Bullet Farm and their leader, as he longed to do, he would gain the open hostility of the other two packs. They would hunt him down like the worst traitor, and he would probably die before even leaving the Three Packs’ territory.

Despite being separate entities, the Three Packs functioned as a single block. Their dominance was sustained by the powerful alliance of their ringleaders. That alliance gained them a demented crusade, conquering more territory that any pack before, instantly eliminating any threat in order to continue their reign. They reflected the worst and most backward of the human race in their constant fight for superiority. They were extremely violent and territorial, but fighting was prohibited between members of the Three Packs—so they constituted a coalition, and recognized each other as equals. The only ones who could be attacked and hunted were the strangers, fewer and fewer of whom dared to set foot in their territory.

**_Mmmm…a challenge._** Eddie almost jumped when he heard that thick voice so suddenly in his head. He took off his binoculars and inspected the territory with his own eyes. **_But I promise you this, Eddie: you are not going to die._**

“I’m not so sure about that,” said Eddie.

**_I know what you think, Eddie, I’m in your head._**

“Then you know I believe that I will die within the walls of this fort. Or, best case, trying to flee the Three Packs’ territory.”

**_You are not going to die, Eddie,_** Venom repeated, almost stubbornly. **_I will not let you die now that I have finally found you._**

Eddie jumped a little, feeling how Venom was moving under the surface of his skin at the same time that a chill ran over him from the outside. It was an absolutely sensual feeling, something almost erotic, and for a second he wondered if Venom felt it that way, too, if it was something Venom was doing consciously. He exhaled strongly and ground his teeth, trying to get his heartbeat back to normal.

When Venom was finished emerging from the pores of Eddie’s skin, he didn’t even bother to mention his reaction, as if he hadn’t noticed it. He had emerged from Eddie’s left shoulder, materializing with the now-familiar form of a head supported on tentacles that kept it connected to his body.

“If what you want is to live, why did you agree to help me with this?”

**_Eddie is sad all the time, shattered, thinking about the deaths of Anne and Esperanza,_** said Venom seriously, his gaze fixed on the same objective as Eddie. **_If I help you do this, it’s so you can let them rest in peace._**

Eddie turned his head to look at Venom. He had stretched out his great shining eyes to stare with intense concentration at the objective the two of them could see in the distance. It gave Eddie goosebumps to feel that overwhelming sensation of Venom’s dominance, of his predatory and terrifying attitude, as if he were ready for anything.

“Rest in peace…” Eddie muttered, thinking deeply about the implications. “That’s what a symbiote thinks?”

**_That’s what you think._ **

“I guess you aren’t giving me any choice except to live,” Eddie sighed, as if he were resigned, but he was smiling, “Anyway, I’m not doing this just for me—I also have to get you some goddamn heads for breakfast.”

**_Sounds fair, Eddie._**

“I think we have a good chance of getting in, assuming that they can’t detect that I’m infected now,” he said. Eddie lifted up his binoculars again and inspected the fortifications in the distance, gauging the nearest of the three, trying to calculate how much time it would take before the other two cities could come to the Bullet Farm’s aid.

“Tell me something, V. Is there some way of knowing if a human is united with a symbiote?”

**_Not unless you’re united with one. We can detect other members of our own species, but not humans. Not when they are part of a symbiosis._ **

Symbiosis was a thing that Venom had already explained to Eddie. Since they symbiotes had changed leadership and had embarked on the task of devouring the cosmos planet by planet, there hadn’t been much symbiosis. What there had been instead was taking possession and control over the body of a host, but not an equal-to-equal relationship where both benefited each other. Because of this, Eddie had only met infected people who acted like zombies. And it was for this same reason that he hoped nobody would realize that he himself was one of those infected people.

“Right now, I think we have the best shot,” Eddie said, lowering the binoculars and turning his head to look closely at Venom.

**_Yes, Eddie. Together we are strong, we are a pack._**

“Okay. I’m trusting you on this, V.”

**_V?_ **

“Well, I thought if I’m going to be ‘your Eddie,’ you could be my V.”

**_That sounds reasonable._ **

“Great—let’s do it, then. We have a city to reduce to ashes.”

Eddie walked quickly toward the Interceptor, raising a little cloud of dust with each step. Venom hadn’t gone back inside Eddie’s body, so he walked feeling the light weight of the symbiote’s body over his shoulder, as if all of him were made of some graceful, indestructible substance.

Waiting for him in the car was the radio, playing at a very low volume after suddenly recovering its signal. It was the voice of the one they called the Immortan. Eddie would have been able to recognize him anywhere without even needing to hear his demented message. It was the calm tone of his voice, the passion with which he expressed his ideas—Eddie had listened to it for such a long time, when that voice had been his only companion, that he was able to realize that until now, the Immortan had had a head-cold.

Many times, at night, when he lay alone bedding down in the desert with just the company of the stars, Eddie had imagined what the Immortan would be like, if such a person actually existed in the world. He had always pictured him as a young man, a natural leader, a visionary. But it had become clear to Eddie that the man was completely insane.

_“Perhaps it is because you fear death that you do not fight, brothers? Perhaps you have still not understood that it is better to die fighting for our liberty than to be held prisoner every day by our life?_ ” he asked with that deep, smooth voice.

It was a voice that gave the impression that its owner was a man who knew that he had everything under control—someone who didn’t need to raise their voice to make themself heard because everyone quieted in their presence, a man accustomed to command. But also, someone obtuse, a man who could not accept that any position existed that did not belong to him. He was a dreamer, Eddie thought.

_“It is better to die standing than to live kneeling! Keep your hearths always lit, because in the fire lies the key to our victory, my War Boys, my highway warriors. Die fighting and you will live forever, shining and chrome!”_

**_Who is that, Eddie?_ **

“Nobody.”

Eddie stretched out his hand and turned off the radio with a decisive smack. The message had given him the shivers and he wasn’t in the mood to fill up his head with that long string of stupidities.

**_Was he talking about us, Eddie? About the symbiotes?_ **

“I don’t guess he’s seen many symbiotes like you, V,” Eddie said. “To him, the members of your species are just monsters.”

**_And to you?_** Venom wanted to know. **_Am I also a monster to you?_**

“No, V, never.”

Venom had his head tilted toward Eddie, his half-closed eyes seeming to study him and his constant smile taking on a serious cant.

Eddie stretched out his hand toward Venom and he dared to touch him for the first time, sliding the tips of his fingers over the smooth, damp surface like cold velvet. In response, Venom closed his eyes and his throat emitted a hoarse and low sound, like a purr. An electric current ran over Eddie’s body in that moment, and left him frozen in place.

“You know what, V?” he asked suddenly, astonished by what he had just discovered, the surprise tinting the tone of his voice. “I don’t want to die. For the first time, I feel like life has started to kind of make sense, you know? I don’t want to die yet. I have a lot to live for.”

**_You are not going to die, Eddie. I promise you._ **

Eddie had to smile, drawing his hand away from Venom’s cheek and firmly taking the wheel. The Interceptor turned over with a roar and got moving in a matter of seconds, accelerating to its maximum capacity.

It hadn’t reached midday yet when Eddie slowed down, pulling up before the enormous compounds of the Bullet Farm. There were Sentinels high up in the walls, aiming their flamethrowers with sufficient range to reduce him to ashes at the first suspicion. Eddie scented the air in their direction, trying to determine who this cast of men were that inspected him with hard faces from afar. If they were mostly Betas, he would have a problem being accepted on the simple fact of being an Omega.

It was a dangerous game, but Eddie decided to risk it.

“Okay, here we go,” he said.

**_I am with you, Eddie,_** Venom told him in his mind. **_Always._**

“Perfect. Then I guess our only problem is going to be how to get out of here alive.”

Eddie got out of the Interceptor, hands raised to make it clear that he was unarmed and that they came in peace. He walked with measured, heavy steps across the burning sand, the radioactive sun of midday practically melting the soles of his boots, but this was nothing new for him—out there on the road, that was how the world was.

There was such silence throughout the citadel that Eddie could hear the crunch of his footsteps on the sand, and feel the tension in the air as something palpable, almost electric. It was fear.

“Halt!” shouted the Commander of the Sentinels, firing a warning shot between Eddie’s feet. Eddie stopped instantly and raised his face to the sky. The sun’s backlight only let him see his silhouette cropped against the intense blue sky. “What do you want?”

“Refuge. Safety.”

The Commander of the Sentinels was a severe man, approaching the end of his middle age, relentless. He frowned down at Eddie, aiming his scope with cold determination. If it weren’t for the other lookout’s shout, Eddie might have been stopped right there, with a hole between the eyes.

“Wait!” shouted another Sentinel, one stationed closer to the doors. “Does anyone else smell that? It’s an Omega! An Omega!”

The Commander of the Sentinels furrowed his brow once more and lowered the weapon at once. Eddie could see him scenting in Eddie’s direction, watched his nostrils expanding to capture his scent, and saw the absolute incredulity tattooed onto his eyes upon realizing that Eddie was an Omega.

“Quickly!” he shouted, without looking away from Eddie, “Bring the Alpha. Bring Carnage!”


	10. just an omega

Eddie had never been to the Bullet Farm, and so the sight of its ramparts of sand, as soon as they were behind him, seemed very imposing.

The Three Packs’ cities were fortified in distinct levels, each one with its own style. Watertown was raised above three great rocky promontories, with hanging bridges that connected them. Gasoline City had its wall of scrap metal and a trench of flaming petrol. But of the three, it was the Bullet Farm that was the most impressive, because of the enormous human effort that had gone into its construction.

Its walls were made from sand compressed into bricks, fortified over the years, hardened by the sun. It must have been close to twenty metres high and at least five metres thick, maybe even seven metres at the turrets. It had a circular plan, but there were also five turrets, their battlements equipped with gigantic flamethrowers, and a catwalk that bordered the top edge of the rampart wall and allowed the Sentinels to move freely across it. Its construction must have taken years of manual labour and organization toward one single goal: survival.

And Eddie was about to reduce it to ashes.

When the reinforced iron doors opened to admit him, Eddie watched an entire contingent of War Boys emerge. They all had naked chests full of tattoos and red paint around their eyes, like a mask. They circled him, aiming at him with their lances, which had explosives embedded in their tips. They formed a half-circle around Eddie and they were closing in, step by step, at the order of the group’s leader. With each shout, Eddie was corralled until he was forced to enter the fort walking backwards.

Inside, the buildings followed the same logic as the encircling rampart: circles aggregated one upon another, forming a great honeycomb with various levels interconnected inside. At the centre of the citadel there was a plaza—also circular—from which emerged five paths, one for each turret. They were guiding Eddie toward that plaza.

While they were walking, Eddie evaluated the state of the fortification, its weapons, its organization, and how well-defended it was. He was desperately trying to work out a plan that would allow him to escape with his life. He had the strength of Venom on his side—but the Bullet Farm had fire.

When he arrived at the central plaza, Eddie heard the first howl. An instant later, he heard the second, and later a third. It was the Sentinels, who had jumped from the ramparts and were now running across the roofs of the strange conglomerated dwellings, communicating with each other.

By each one’s position, Eddie deduced that they had him surrounded and that they had secured the perimeter. He could feel their weapons pointed at him at all times and, inside his chest, a smooth vibration that indicated to him Venom’s anxiousness to emerge, reacting to the aggressiveness of these other Alphas. Eddie understood very well how much Venom must be restraining himself, how difficult it must be for him. Although he wasn’t afraid, he felt something that made the hairs on his arms stand up.

Dogs cried the alarm with their deep barks. It was unusual for dogs to be kept in a den, because no one had so much food that they could afford to share it with animals. However, they were always very appreciated for their unparalleled ability to detect the monsters. These dogs were four mastiffs, big ones, with powerful jaws and throats adorned with spiked collars—and they were growling as they walked in Eddie’s direction.

He heard a sharp, strong whistle from afar, an order that made the animals stop coming closer, but they remained alert with their bodies leaning forward, their front paws flexing and hackles raised, ready to act at the first order or the smallest movement. Eddie knew that those jaws could break his arm easily.

He became aware of footsteps behind him, and soon saw all the warriors jump from the roofs and surround him. They didn’t bother to point their rifles at him—they had flamethrowers. Eddie swallowed hard, still keeping his hands raised in a sign of surrender, and turned a full circle on his tiptoes looking for any weakness in the human wall that surrounded him.

“At ease!” ordered a strong, hard voice.

It was the Commander of the Sentinels, who had come down from the wall and came walking toward Eddie calmly, without raising his gun, but with all of his senses on high alert. He was a man with an imposing presence: tall, strong, and solid, although he was getting on in years. He stopped next to one of the mastiffs and petted its ear gently, with his feet well-planted on the floor and a rigid expression on his face.

“These animals are quite expensive to maintain,” he said suddenly, lowering his gaze for the first time to smile at the dog, “but they are more loyal than anyone and there is no one better for detecting monsters. They smell them, they feel them…. They have never been mistaken yet.”

“And the way they growl at me,” Eddie asked, keeping his hands in the air but looking sharply at the Sentinel and raising an eyebrow, “what does that mean?” 

“If I had not stopped them, they would have ripped you to pieces.” The Sentinel sketched a slow smile, showing off a horrible set of artificial teeth filed to sharp points. He never stopped looking Eddie in the eye, and Eddie could sense a certain malevolence in him; all his instincts shouted ‘danger.’ 

“Shall I sic them on you?”

**_Should we eat his head, Eddie?_** Venom’s voice resounded with more force than usual, the indignant tone causing a strange vibration all over his body.

Eddie put his right hand over his heart and caressed it, making slow circles. That gesture had already transformed into a means of communication between them, something that told Venom, “Calm down.”

**_Fine, we’ll wait,_** Venom growled.

“I don’t know if you’ve seen one of those infected people before,” said Eddie, smiling, “but I assure you that they don’t look like me.”

“I know. That’s why I stopped the dogs.” The Sentinel whistled again, differently this time, and the dogs jumped forward, growling and showing their teeth. They were at most two metres away from Eddie—he could sense the strong smell of the animals, their rage and their fear, because those dogs knew what he was.

Distantly, Eddie was beginning to notice the hoarse laugh of the Sentinel, but except for him not another human sound could be heard in the plaza. The War Boys were like mute human statues, disciplined and obedient. 

“What is all this commotion?”

Eddie tore his gaze away from the dark eyes of the beasts in front of him and directed his attention toward the man who had spoken, and who was approaching him at a calm pace. He had emerged from one of the dark, clean, semi-subterranean dwellings, so the change of light from inside to out made him wrinkle his brow in annoyance.

His voice was smooth, and although in his serious tone there was a touch of reluctance, of eternal ennui, his authority was unquestionable. He came with a naked chest, letting everyone see his pronounced, strong musculature, although the years had been making a dent in him; he was an Alpha arriving at the twilight of his reign, although he must have been strong—extremely strong—in his youth.

His hands and arms were bloody to the elbows, as if he had just finished committing a murder.

Eddie watched him for a moment, evaluating him even though the scent was clouding his judgment. He seemed smaller, hunched, with yellowed skin wrinkling at the brow, in the corners of his eyes and mouth, with his cheeks tanned by the sun and his dry lips pursed in a hard expression. But without a doubt, the indomitable red hair and reddened eyes that watched Eddie without blinking were the same ones that belonged to the man who had killed Esperanza with a decisive blow to the head: the Red Alpha.

He had to dig his nails into the palms of his hands to stop himself from jumping on the man and tearing out his eyes with his own hands. But once again, Venom came to his rescue. He covered Eddie’s palms so that he couldn’t hurt himself and formed an intimate contact between them, as if they were holding hands, while sending a calming scent through the bond that was keeping them united. Eddie felt it as something warm in his chest that relaxed his limbs and calmed the speeding rhythm of his heart.

**_Be calm, Eddie, my Eddie_** , Venom whispered. **_I am here. I will not leave you alone._**

Eddie breathed deeply, lowered his head, and calmed himself down.

“They called me here because of a matter with an Omega,” said the Red Alpha.

“This is him, Cletus,” said the Sentinel, moving his head so that the point of his raised chin indicated Eddie. “He doesn’t seem infected, but the dogs didn’t react well to him.”

The Alpha studied him for long minutes, watching him always with his deep frown and his scowling mouth. He crouched in order to pet of one of the dogs, who removed their attention from Eddie for the first time in order to lick their owner’s cheek. At this, the man who had previously demonstrated complete indifference to everything let out a low laugh and relaxed the hard expression on his face.

**_This is the one we have to kill_** , whispered Venom. **_Shall we begin?_**

Eddie shook his head.

“You’re the Alpha leader?” Eddie asked.

“This is Cletus, our leader,” the Sentinel answered for him. “But most of us call him Carnage because…well, you can imagine!” He made a gesture with his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. “He likes butchery, slaughter. Carnage.”

“What are you doing here, boy?” Carnage wanted to know, petting the animal’s fur and lifting only his face toward Eddie. “Where do you come from, and what did you come here looking for?”

“I’m here seeking refuge,” Eddie answered without hesitation. “I’m going to be straight with you: I want to live and I know I won’t be able to do that alone. I’m just an Omega.” He lifted his hands and shrugged his shoulders. “I need a strong Alpha to protect me. I need the security of a pack, because I tried it out there on my own, and nothing good came of it, believe me. Life is hard out there.”

“Yes, that sounds like a good story, but you know what?” Carnage stood up slowly, chuckling. When he looked back at Eddie, his face had tightened and his mouth had changed, tightening into that hard expression, looking at him cruelly. “That story is too good to be true. To start with, an Omega could never be born out there and survive alone all that time. Where do you come from? Where were you born?”

Eddie looked at him, troubled: things were not going as smoothly as he had hoped. Carnage seemed to have especially acute instincts; he was the type of person who could sniff out lies, so Eddie needed to tell a story that wasn’t a complete invention if he wanted to convince him. 

“I was born in Watertown,” he admitted in a low voice, toneless and free of all emotion. “I ran away when I was sixteen because I didn’t want to live cooped up like a prisoner. I waited months for the right moment, planning out every detail. I saw my chance the day that the pack were celebrating a great triumph that the alliance had achieved, everyone drinking together in the plaza.”

The story was true: that had been the plan that he and Anne had followed the night they had escaped together. But Eddie told the story as if it had happened to another person, not allowing his emotions to be reflected in his voice or face even for an instant.

“I took advantage of the Sentinels’ inebriation and under cover of darkness, I stole one of the assault vehicles, filled it up with provisions, and made my escape. They didn’t realize I was gone until the next day at noon, when they all woke up befuddled from their hangovers—and I was off in the direction of the mountains by then, kilometres away.”

“I remember something like that,” Carnage admitted. He hadn’t broken eye contact with Eddie once during the entire length of his tale, attempting to smell the tiniest indication of fear like a wily fox. “I have a good memory, and if I recall correctly you did not leave alone. Am I wrong?”

Eddie thought about it for a few seconds, unsure of how to answer. It could be a ruse.

“An Alpha left with me.” 

“Aha! I knew it.” Carnage laughed hoarsely and turned around to see the Sentinel’s arched brows. “I remember this: the two young lovers who ran away from Watertown. That was…almost fifteen years ago, no?” Eddie nodded. “And what happened to your Alpha?”

“Died. I’m alone now, so I need protection.”

Carnage kept silent, evaluating Eddie again with his piercing gaze that seemed interested in stabbing all the way into his soul. Carnage passed his tongue over his dry lips and stroked his beard in a pensive gesture, leaving it soaked with blood—although that didn’t seem to bother him.

“What the two of you did is called treason.” He pronounced the sentence in a serious voice. “Under the laws of the Three Packs, this carries the penalty of death.”

“What can I say—I was young and stupid,” said Eddie. “I know it was treason, but I’m an Omega, you know, we’re scarce and all that…. You don’t actually intend to kill me, do you?”

Carnage cackled. He turned to look at the Sentinel again, as if he wanted to share a private joke with him, but his laughter cut off suddenly when he turned back to look at Eddie.

“Watertown is our ally.” This time, his tone was cold and sharp as steel. “I can’t let you stay here without running the risk of creating a problem with them. I ought to send you away.”

“Okay, well, I won’t tell them if you don’t,” Eddie said.

Carnage laughed again and approached Eddie with a smile tattooed across his lips. The dogs growled when the Alpha closed the distance, some even disobeying their orders and advancing a few cautious steps forward, crouched in an attack position, barking, until Carnage gave a strong whistle and ordered them to silence. The mastiffs sat down on their hindquarters, but they were still restless, fierce and majestic. 

Carnage focused his attention on Eddie, narrowing his red eyes when their gazes met. He made that same gesture again with his mouth, a tightening of lips every time that he studied Eddie carefully. He walked all the way around Eddie, looking him over from head to toe, getting close enough to scent his throat, behind his ears, just above the glands where pheromones were most concentrated.

“Mmmm…I see now,” he said with his nose shoved into the skin of Eddie’s throat, his hot breath making the hairs on the back of Eddie's neck bristle. Eddie wanted to move, but he gathered all his willpower and was able to stay still. “A fertile Omega, just about to go into his heat.”

This declaration startled Eddie so much that he froze, still as a stone. It was impossible to hide his surprise and as he turned his neck to meet Carnage’s gaze, the fright was visible on his face.

“What, you thought I wouldn’t figure it out?” Carnage asked, smiling slightly. The gesture of amusement curved his lips, the twisted joy shining in his eyes. “This is why you’ve come, no? You’ll need help with your heat.”

He smiled wider. For the first time, Eddie could see his long fangs sticking out, and his other teeth, which had been filed into points. Carnage’s eyes darkened and suddenly gained a crazed expression, brutal, almost animalistic. He licked his lips, growling low. An explosion of testosterone surged out of him in that moment, a strong scent, irritating, unpleasant. Eddie felt it as an itch on the tip of his nose and it made him nauseous—he was on the verge of vomiting right there—but he bit his lip and resisted.

“Good. We’ll take things calmly. We’ll decide what to do with you after your heat passes,” Carnage declared quietly. “For now, you may stay with the other Omegas of the city. Soulcrusher!” he shouted to the Commander of the Sentinels. “Take him to the den, have him washed and prepared. I will pay him a visit tonight.”

After that, he was lost again inside one of those buildings, walking and whistling calmly, followed by the mastiffs who trotted to keep up with him and lick the blood from his hands. He didn’t even bother to look at Eddie a second time.

Soulcrusher, the Sentinel, took Eddie firmly by the arm and pushed him toward the den where they kept the Omegas. They put them in one of the circular living spaces—so strange to Eddie—and descended via a staircase sculpted in the sandstone that twisted over and over itself like a snail, going into the very centre of the earth.

When they arrived, Eddie saw an iron grate, and past that, a network of bell-shaped caverns carved into the soft sandstone. He was met by the cold, the stillness, and the most absolute silence. The lack of light made him stagger, losing his footing on the staircase and he would have hovered just on the verge of falling if the firm hand of the Sentinel had not kept him stable.

“Omegas!” shouted Soulcrusher when they had reached the bottom.

At the first glance Eddie couldn’t see anyone, nothing more than deserted rooms with furniture, shelves, and food, candlelit, with paintings on the walls that indicated that someone, in fact, did live there. But eventually a score of fragile, terrified creatures emerged from the shadows.

Eddie looked at them, shocked. His eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and he could see them in detail without much effort. They were men and women dressed in swaths of white linen, all of them with the palest skin and enigmatic eyes with irises so clear they almost seemed transparent—presumably due to their prolonged exposure to the darkness.

All of them were marked with the tattoo of a chain—interlaced bullets that crossed the right side of their faces, from their foreheads to their chins—and many of them with scars all over their bodies, some mutilated as well. Around their pelvis, each of them wore a heavy iron and hardened-leather belt that kept them untouchable to everyone else besides their Alpha.

“Yes, Alpha,” answered the oldest of the group: the matriarch. She bowed her weak body toward the floor in deference, and the rest imitated her.

“This is a new Omega. Prepare him, because today he will visit Carnage,” said Soulcrusher.

“As you command, Alpha,” she said. The old woman spoke to him at all times without daring to lift her head. No one emitted even the tiniest sound while the Sentinel was there—Eddie could even hear the crackling sound of agitated cries from a slight air current that drifted down from the ceiling.

Only when the Alpha left did the creatures approach Eddie in silence, circling him with their smooth fragile bodies, pressing against him, sharing their heat with him. It was a pack’s welcome.

“Look at the state of you, boy,” said the old woman, her voice trembling because of the shivers that wracked her weakened body. She put both of her hands on Eddie’s cheeks and brought his face down to her height so she could look him directly in the eyes. “You’re covered in sand, like you took a bath in it!”

“Did they capture you?” one of the other women wanted to know. She was one of the youngest, tall and slender, with long hair the golden colour of sun on sand—but her left eye had been incinerated, her skin burnt with a hot iron, and now it lay dead, smashed against the inside of her eyelid. “Do you come from outside? From past the desert?”

“I came here from the Red Mountains,” Eddie said, standing on his tiptoes to see her clearly. The Omegas approached him, stretched out their hands to touch his skin, his throat, his arms—becoming acquainted with him. “But way out there, desert is all there is.”

“Of course not,” answered the woman, smiling. Her one eye shone large and round with the light of her hope. “Way out there, past the mountains and beyond the dry sea, that’s where the green earth is—the promised land. The Immortan has seen it. He’s going to save us all.”

“The Immortan? That’s just a story.” Eddie frowned. His serious voice had become hoarser than usual, subtracting all the heat from his tone. “That character is nothing more than a voice on the radio. I have been out there, for many years, and I can assure you that there is no green earth—and certainly nobody is immortal.”

“But he’s out there! He’s going to save us all. He is the one who has touched the sun.”

“Don’t fuck with me. Those are lies!” Eddie shouted. He pushed them away firmly and they backed off. “Tell me, how long have you spent listening to that hoax? You, the matriarch, how long have you been listening to it?”

“Since I was a very young girl,” the old woman admitted, trembling.

“That’s because it’s just a recording, it’s not a real person,” Eddie said.

“Now you just stop all of this already,” the woman said, cutting him off. The shine in her single eye had dimmed now, and her whole face contorted into a hard expression. “We must prepare you, as the Alpha ordered. Tonight they’ll be coming to find you so they can bring you to the leader. If you satisfy him, and if he’s in a good mood, it’s possible that he won’t hurt you. But you have to be ready for that first.”

“Those marks,” Eddie asked, pointing to her scars, “did the Red Alpha do that to you?”

“Red Alpha—that’s a good name for him. He certainly likes that blood-red colour—it suits him.”

“You’ll get your tattoos as well, tomorrow,” interrupted the matriarch, “after the initiation.”

Eddie suddenly felt that sorrow was crushing his heart. He felt lost, adrift, without anything to anchor himself on. He raised a hand to the tattooed cheek of the matriarch and caressed her with the back of his hand. She was so startled by the gesture, which was so unusual in her world, that she almost shook from fright. But she surrendered instantly to the caress, closed her eyes and leaned her face into his hand.

**_We must help them, Eddie,_** said Venom suddenly, startling him.

“Why haven’t you tried to flee?” Eddie whispered to her. The horror had softened his voice. “If this is how they treat you in here…why have you wasted all this time?”

“What can we do?” the woman answered. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “We’re just Omegas.”

“It’s our destiny,” said the young woman. “The only one who can change our destiny is the Immortan.”

**_I am going to rip off that Red Alpha’s head!_**

“We’ll do that, V.”

Eddie moved his hand away from the old woman’s face. He could feel the dampness of her tears burning his skin. He grit his teeth and his jaw muscles stood out on the sides of his face, giving him a hard expression—almost cruel.

“Let me give you all a warning,” he told them in his hoarse voice, thick with rage. “Tonight, get to the deepest, safest den you know. Bar your doors and do not dare to let anyone inside, no matter what you hear.” He inspected them one by one. The Omegas were watching him silently, but he could see fear in their faces and suddenly the scent of terror inundated the entire place.

“Tonight, the Bullet Farm is going to burn to the ground.”


End file.
